


Pathfinder

by bomberqueen17



Series: The Lost Kings [11]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Shattered Empire
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alderaan, Death Star, Dissociation, F/M, Flashbacks, Jedha, Military Training, Scarif, Suicidal Ideation, kes really really really needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-01-08 04:53:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12247392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: Kes joins the special forces, and then current events catch up.





	1. Luminous

**Author's Note:**

> Warning, I suppose, for massive amounts of off-screen character death in a canon event. Yes, that's where we are in the timeline now.

Kes stood at a window, looking out at the ravishingly beautiful Yavin sky. The gas giant loomed, luminous, covering about a third of the visible sky; below, the jungle swept out in a billion shades of green, and a whisper bird traversed the near horizon, feathers glimmering and rippling with the movement of its passage.

He checked the chrono they’d issued him, that he still wasn’t used to carrying. Ten minutes. It would probably take him about five to walk down to the basement meeting room they’d told him to report to. So he pulled out the datapad he’d been handed with all the comms he’d received here loaded on it, and poked through it until he found the most recent one from Shara, which was just her and Poe-- mostly her telling Poe to look at the holocam, and Poe not really being able to focus on anything because he was an infant. She’d sent a bunch of still holos too, and an explanatory note that he thought might have come from Leia Organa had said that they’d just chucked as many still holos of the kid as would fit in as padding, more or less, for the encryption. It was an enormous luxury and Kes was grateful, and made a mental note to expend the effort to write Leia a thank-you note.

Kes went through the still holos for a moment, finding one that Shara was in. She looked tired, but well-groomed, which indicated that at least she was able to make an attempt to take care of herself. A good sign, the kind of sign he was used to looking for. In this holo she was looking down at Poe and smiling softly at him, her face close to his, sleepy and sweet and doting. It was a great holo; Norasol surely hadn’t taken it, but maybe Sento had. Norasol had an unusual gift for taking terrible blurry holos, regardless of equipment.

He slumped down against the wall and let himself curl up, staring dolefully at that holo. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to smell her hair. Sure, he wanted to meet that kid, but he missed Shara awfully.

He’d sent a reply home, but it had been general, answering all the ones that had been sent to him all in one. (Marita had sent one, and Ori had poked his head in. Kes missed them. And Tito had sent one, expressing resigned annoyance at likely being selected as Lita’s successor-- but, more happily, admitting that Zara had found a job on Alderaan and had just been confirmed to be pregnant, so Poe would have a cousin almost exactly his own age.)

Kes wanted to be there. There was nothing in this life that he loved more than when everyone all got together, and he was missing it, and he could feel the lack acutely like a sharp hollow in his gut, like an itch in the back of his mind. It was, sometimes, worse than being tortured, he thought.

And he badly, badly wanted someone to remind him that he was a person from a context and not just a disembodied spirit of pain and fear and violence.

But he wasn’t going to get that. Instead, he had to go to a meeting, or something. He knew it was about whether he was fit to serve; he’d had to report to that nice doctor, and she’d apologetically run the scanner over him and filled out a bunch of ticky boxes on her datapad, and asked a number of unsettling questions that he’d been uncomfortably aware were really about his mental state.

Part of him wanted to just spill his guts and tell her everything, but he wanted to retain some choice in his future assignments, so instead he’d managed to keep his answers matter-of-fact and light. She didn’t seem to have noticed how raw his hands were from repeated washing to get every last trace of blood out from the creases of his skin and the edges of his nails.

The message he’d sent home had mentioned none of that. It had been neutral, noncommittal, as close to upbeat as he could manage to come. He’d put in only minimal code-- a few observations about the weather to indicate that he figured all-out war was brewing, and a reference to Nixi and Buna’s adventure that he figured Lita would assume was metaphorical but Norasol might realize was literal-- and as for the rest had only said how glad he was to hear from everyone, how much he regretted not seeing anyone, how much he wished he could meet Poe.

He’d recorded a much more heartfelt message, while drunk-- Andor had showed up and gotten him drunk, and he vaguely remembered recording the message, tearful and frightened and raw, and then deleting it, under Andor’s guidance, possibly as a way to get it all out. He’d passed out-- he vaguely remembered that he’d lost track of consciousness at some point, perhaps in a hallway, certainly in Andor’s company-- and woken in his own bed, brutally hung-over, but he figured that was all done with now. Hopefully nobody’d seen him and he hadn’t said anything too ridiculous. He mostly remembered all of it; Andor had been calm and sympathetic and supportive, and had seemed to be drinking along with him but in hindsight had definitely been sober through the whole thing.

Oh well.

Time: Kes switched off the holo, dragged himself up off the floor and walked down to the meeting room he’d been told to report to. He’d already scouted out where it was, so he arrived precisely one minute early, as he’d intended to.

It was a small meeting room. Captain Wani had entered it just before he had, and so was in the process of sitting down at a circular holotable that took up most of the room. Kes came in the doorway and stepped to one side, looking around the room and taking stock of the people. There were two people he didn’t know, one in a major’s uniform and the other dressed in sort of fancy civilian clothes, both already seated at the far end of the table.

“Private Dameron,” Captain Wani said. “Please, have a seat.” She looked pleasant enough, but this wasn’t a social occasion. Kes sat in the chair she had gestured to, which thankfully didn’t have its back to the door. She glanced at her chrono.

“We’ll start in a moment,” said the civilian, who Kes had thought was a woman but now, hearing the voice and seeing the face more clearly, he realized was a Keshian and probably male.

Another person came in the door, a man, human or nearly so, in a utility uniform. He glanced around the room, said, “All present?” and when the civilian nodded, swiped the door shut. He came in and sat down at the table a couple of seats away from Kes, not quite next to the other three, who were all at adjacent seats on the opposite side.

He was in his thirties, Kes thought probably, sharp-featured and dark-eyed, with close-cropped black hair and a medium-brown complexion. There was a captain’s insignia on his collar. He was looking at Kes about as keenly as Kes was looking at him. As their eyes met, the man didn’t quite smile, but he quirked his eyebrows in a manner that suggested acknowledgement, at least.

“Shall we begin?” the civilian asked. “I’m Talo Rakk, an administrative liason with the diplomatic corps within the Alliance. I mostly handle personnel concerns. I should have met with you earlier, Private Dameron, but things have been rather hectic around here. This is Major Andrakul, he’s in the logistics branch here and oversees personnel assignments. Of course you know Captain Wani from the Reconnaissance branch, and then this is Captain Tarak, of the Special Forces.” He indicated the last man who had entered.

Kes nodded nervously. He didn’t know what was expected of him, so he didn’t speak.

“We’ve all been briefed on the events of your most recent patrol as well as the events that led to your recruitment to the Rebellion,” Rakk went on. “I’ve discussed it with Captain Wani, already, and she and I both agree that while you should be commended for your bravery, there is cause for concern for the state of your mind. Of course it goes against healthy human nature to be a soldier, and so we often feel the need to concern ourselves over how well our soldiers are holding up under the strain. Again, you should be commended for your bravery, and this is not a disciplinary hearing. We are simply trying to determine what would be the healthiest course for you, as well as the best thing for the Rebellion.”

Kes pulled his lower lip into his mouth, and scraped his teeth against it on the way back out. “Well?” he said. “What did the doctor say? Did she think I was crazy?”

Something about this seemed to amuse Captain Tarak; he raised both eyebrows, smiled slightly, and sat back in his chair as if satisfied. Kes wanted to ask him what was so funny, but he made himself look away, and instead looked at Captain Wani. _Did I seem crazy to you when I was saving your ass_ , he nearly asked her, but he really didn’t want to hear her answer, which he could probably guess anyway or why would they be having this meeting?

“Dr. Kalonia’s assessment of you was very sympathetic,” Rakk began, steepling his fingers in front of him on the table.

“I know everything I need to,” Captain Tarak put in, neatly managing to not quite interrupt Rakk, who had clearly been marshaling his thoughts to say something else. Everyone paused to look at Tarak: he was smiling slightly more broadly.

“And?” Rakk prompted, slightly impatiently.

“While it’s no easy thing for a man to do as he has done,” Tarak said, “his actions were perfectly reasonable. This man is not a berserker or unstable.”

“If you could tell that from the doctor’s report,” Captain Wani said, concealing irritation not very thoroughly, “then why bother letting this meeting go forward?”

“I suspected it from the doctor’s report,” Tarak said, “but I had to see and hear him in person to be sure. I’m sure now. If he wants to join the next round of Spec Forces training,” and he turned slightly to address Kes directly, “which I oversee, you’d be welcome. Or feel free to pursue any position Andrakul and Rakk say is open to you.”

Rakk very clearly summoned his patience and leaned back in his chair. “Do you care to share your reasoning with the rest of us, or are we simply to admire your deductive powers from afar?”

Tarak shrugged one shoulder. “It’s a matter of context,” he said. “If you told me some raw green recruit was running around assassinating enemies with a nonstandard weapon he’d had no training on, I’d be concerned. But when you tell me a story that sounds exactly like a story I’ve heard before, and I can figure out that the green recruit in question has also heard the same story, then it’s a great deal less alarming.”

Kes suddenly put two and two together; Tarak had very little accent in his speech in Basic, but what there was, was Outer Rim. Tarak was clearly an Outer Rim Iberican. A lot of the refugees from Xicul had found places through Fronteras, so it stood to reason that their stories were now part of Fronteras’s rich stable of internal mythology and iconography. (It was why the silhouettes of the Lost Kings were so often figures in Fronteras tattoos; so many of their members had ties to the planet, or identified with the plight of the refugees.) And Fronteras had a huge influence in the collective culture of Outer Rim Ibericans, whether affiliated with the clans or not.

“Explain,” Captain Wani said uncertainly.

Tarak pulled a holo chip out of somewhere, maybe he’d had it in his hand all along, and leaned forward to stick it into the slot on the table. “I suspected I’d find this to be the case, so I came prepared to prove that I’m not crazy either.” He laughed, glancing over at Rakk. “I know how you feel about Spec Forces. But about this-- you have to know to know, I think, and we don’t share our stories outside our own network very much, but I found a few illustrations because I thought it might sound weird.” And he pulled up a stack of files on the interface, sorted through them, and brought out a particular one. It was a brocaded weaving pattern, clearly work by a Oaxctli or someone familiar with the tradition, depicting two stylized human figures, one with its hand at the other’s throat. One figure was monotone gray, the other was white with black joints-- obviously, iconically, a Trooper in armor, being stabbed in the throat by the gray figure.

Kes realized he’d started up in his seat, maybe even gasped in recognition. Tarak smiled at him.

“It’s a big galaxy,” Tarak said, “and we all grow up with different sets of stories. You-all from the Core Worlds might not know some of the mythology of one particular subgroup of the Outer Rim. And it doesn’t even break down that neatly,” he went on, seeing Kes’s face. “I know Dameron was born in the Core, on Alderaan, I looked it up. But he’s listed as a non-citizen, and I thought it seemed pretty likely that I could guess why-- but I had to see him, and hear him, to know for sure.”

“To know what?” Rakk asked.

“To know that he’s likely to have grown up with some of the same stories I did,” Tarak said. “Like I said, it’s a big galaxy, and there aren’t that many of us who would know. But I thought as much, when I heard of someone using a farm implement to defeat Trooper armor. This is someone who heard the story of Nishi and Bon.” He pulled up another holo: this one was an illustration, paint on a broken concrete wall, depicting a person holding a Stormtrooper’s helmet, with blood dripping out of the bottom of it, in one hand, and a knife in the other.

“Nishi and Bon went out one night and used only their knives and their wits to defeat a patrol of Troopers that was coming to destroy their village,” Tarak said. “They took the comms from the defeated Troopers’ helmets and used feigned voices to lure the others on, and killed them silently by sliding a knife blade between the helmet and neck guard of the Troopers’ armor.” He pulled up another image, this one a copy of a holopainting that showed a young man and a young woman, both beautiful and very young-looking, standing together with knives in their hands. The woman was wearing a form-fitting white dress, artistically splashed with red. A Stormtrooper helmet lay at their feet in a puddle of blood.

“Oh,” Wani said, and only then did she look at Kes. “Why didn’t you tell me it was from a story?”

“Was it from this story?” Rakk asked, frowning. “Is that why you did it?”

Kes tore his eyes away from the picture-- Nixi and Buna had both been women-- and hesitated. “I didn’t think anyone would believe me,” he said. “I thought I would sound even crazier-- I didn’t know anyone but my family knew the story.” He looked at Tarak. “We don’t tell it to outsiders. All we’d need is for them to fix that armor so you can’t do that anymore.”

Tarak nodded. “You notice most of the art isn’t specific,” he said. “That woven one, you wouldn’t easily find an image of that. I had to ask my granny to send me a holo, because it’s from an object she owns.”

“We don’t draw pictures of it,” Kes said, “or weave them. We just tell the story.”

“And from just a story, you knew that you could do this?” Wani asked, shaking her head slightly.

Kes looked at Tarak, and Tarak looked back at him, smile turning a little wry. “Well,” Kes said, looking at Wani, “I didn’t see much choice. And it seemed to me better to die trying. If I’d found out that Stormtroopers have different neck armor pieces now, at least I’d get killed instead of captured.”

Rakk and Andrakul exchanged looks, but Kes couldn’t read their expressions. “Well,” Rakk said.

“That’s certainly colorful,” Andrakul said. His accent wasn’t Core; he was Inner Rim, it sounded like. “Just out of curiosity, were these actual historical figures, or is this from a fictional story? I’m not familiar with any such incident.”

Tarak and Kes traded looks. Kes started to open his mouth, then closed it. Tarak grimaced slightly. “It almost certainly dates to the era of the Separatist conflict,” he said delicately, and Kes had a sudden window into the delicate and complicated politics behind the Alliance to Restore the Republic. (Norasol would sometimes spit whenever anyone mentioned the Republic, but she mostly did it for shock value, Kes was aware.)

Kes looked at his hands. That wasn’t a specific enough answer. “It happened during the fall of Xicul,” he said, and it came out husky so he cleared his throat. “They disappeared hundreds of our people. My mother’s cousin was their little sister. Their real names were Nixi and Buna. They were sisters and Nixi was old enough that she was married and had children.”

Tarak was staring at him slightly open-mouthed, and Kes flicked a glance up at him then back down at his hands. “I was six years old when Tati made me stand on a chair so she could show the others how Nixi put the knife in, what angle she used. It’s not just a story, to us. Maybe other people think of it as just a story, but to us it was real.”

“Nixi,” Tarak said, pronouncing the X soft like Xicul, correctly. “That makes more sense.”

“So they were Republic troopers,” Andrakul said, drawing the conclusion.

Tarak grimaced; Kes didn’t bother having a facial expression about it. “Some of us come from people the Republic never cared about,” Kes said dully. He shrugged one shoulder. “The Empire didn’t change the armor much, it turns out.” He looked up at Andrakul. “It’s not like I don’t know the difference. I wasn’t even two when the Empire took over, my people know fine well what the Republic was and was not.”

“And remember,” Rakk put in delicately, touching Andrakul’s arm, “that Dameron here joined and was vouched for by Bail Organa personally, so, it’s not like there’s any question of his credentials.”

Tarak leaned forward and took his holochip out of the slot, shutting off the display. “At any rate,” he said, “this man is certainly mentally healthy enough to serve in whatever capacity he desires. I’d be honored to take him into my program.”

“Then it is up to him,” Rakk said. “You do not need to give us a final decision at this time, Dameron. You can rejoin your existing patrol for its next deployment, which Captain Wani certainly has the details on, or you can present yourself for the four-month training program with Captain Tarak.”

Kes nodded, and Rakk pushed to his feet. Andrakul followed suit, and Wani stood up more slowly, obviously thinking something over. Tarak stood by the door and gestured the others out. Kes waited for the others to precede him, and Wani looked thoughtfully at him on her way out, but said nothing. Finally he went out, and Tarak followed him, putting a hand on his shoulder. Kes turned to face him and they stood together in the hallway as the others walked away.

“So your family was from Xicul, then,” Tarak said, and his Iberican was, predictably, Outer Rim-accented.

Kes nodded. “We’re the last cohesive group that still identifies as Oaxctli,” he said, a little self-consciously aware of his own accent. Mostly he sounded like he was from the Inner Rim, because his mother did, and he’d never unpicked the whole complicated story of her accent. Something to do with her formal schooling; she’d studied away from home as a girl. As for Kes, for certain words, he sounded Alderaanian, and he could sometimes blur his accent to fit in with the Outer Rim crews he often worked with (and almost all of the dirty words he knew, he pronounced with an Outer Rim accent, which just went to show who’d taught them to him), but when he wasn’t pretending anything, he sounded pretty strongly Inner Rim. He didn’t figure there was anything to be gained from putting on an accent for Tarak.

“They’re the weaving ones,” Tarak said, but it was kind of a question.

“Most of Xicul had weavers,” Kes said. “But not many made it out.”

Tarak shook his head slightly, looking bleak. “Not many of anyone made it out, by the end,” he said. “My grandma left years before the fall, when it first started getting bad. She was Kekai, I think.”

That was another of the groups that had lived on Xicul. Their territories had been closer to the mining operations that had doomed the planet, and Kes knew only a little about them. They’d made art with feathers, he was vaguely aware, in a way his own people had either not done or forgotten how to do. He nodded. “Not many of them left,” he said.

“No,” Tarak said. “Oaxctli, though. They were the last holdouts.”

Kes nodded. “So I’m told,” he said. “I wasn’t born until after.”

Tarak laughed. “Obviously,” he said. “Both your parents, though?” Kes nodded. “You know any of the old languages?”

Kes shook his head. “They took that stuff first,” he said. “My mother doesn’t even speak any. They sent her away to study. They had to.”

“You don’t have to make excuses to me,” Tarak said. He tilted his head down the hall, and they started walking. “Nixi and Buna, huh?”

Kes nodded. “My auntie-- she was really my mother’s cousin I think-- told the story to us the same way every time, like a ritual, and she’d always pick a volunteer to be a Trooper, and show us exactly how Nixi used her knife.”

“Really,” Tarak said.

Kes nodded again. “She made me stand on a stool when I was six,” he said, “so I’d be the right height for her to demonstrate, and then when I got off the stool I’d be the right height for the other kids to practice.”

“No shit,” Tarak said. He shook his head slightly. “That is bad _ass_.”

“We used to practice trying to fool each other over comms too,” Kes said. “We had this set of cheap short-range comms, and we’d run out in the fields and barns and stuff, and try to pretend to be each other. My other auntie could actually do a killer impression of Bail Organa on comms, it was impressive.”

“No shit,” Tarak said again, laughing. “I’d love to hear that.”

Kes shook his head. “No way,” he said. “She’d never let on to an outsider. She’d be mad at me for telling you anything. It was all always a huge secret, we couldn’t tell anyone anything.” He shook his head again, thinking about Norasol giving him the stinkeye for babbling. She still would, too.

“That kind of thing could explain why you did so well in recon training,” Tarak said. “Well, kid. I came to this meeting mostly to defend you because I figured a bunch of Basicos wouldn’t have the necessary context to appreciate a sharp knife and a smart bluff, but now I’m torn between wanting to talk you into the Pathfinders and wanting to talk you out of them. You seem like a sharp kid and I like you, but we tend to eat sharp kids whole, around here, and I got a hunch it’ll only get worse.”

“There are no safe postings,” Kes said. He stopped; they’d reached the end of the hall, and there was a window, and he could see and smell the outdoor air through it. “I was minding my own business with my family and the Empire came for me. There’s nowhere safe in this galaxy. If I can do good things with your group, then I’d better go and do that.”

Tarak gave him a long, considering look, and then smiled. “I think you’re right,” he said.

 

______

 

Spec Forces training was a completely different beast than what Kes had been through before. It wasn’t just that it was hard, it was that it was clearly designed to break the trainee down. Many of the objectives were actually impossible, and the point was to see how far you got before your inevitable failure, set that as a benchmark, and then make you get farther the next time before you failed-- but you would always fail. It was not possible to succeed. And it wasn’t like it was in competition with other trainees; most of the objectives were either done completely alone, or as part of a teamwork exercise.

It was hard, and part of what was so hard, Kes knew, was that he was spiritually and mentally exhausted. He could wear himself out physically enough that his body let him sleep, but he never felt like himself. He spent a lot of time dissociated-- he knew that was what it was called, when he was just reacting and letting the world happen to him like he was a program running inside a droid-- but it got him through things that other people didn’t make it through, and let him complete tasks that nobody else completed, so he supposed it wasn’t all bad.

The other trainees were nice enough. Well, some of them were assholes, but no more so than anywhere else Kes had been, and like anything, having a difficult experience they were going through let them strip away some of the boundaries of politeness and instantly bond quite closely. Kes being not present in himself for a lot of things did put a bit of a barrier in the way, but the others seemed not to realize, or  to take it amiss if they did.

There were no personal comms in the field; Kes had sent one last one to his family telling them all he’d be out of touch, and then anything that came in for him was going to be held until the end of the training session. It was a four-month training, but there’d be breaks every couple of weeks, so he wouldn’t go too long without new holos of Poe.

They made it nearly all the way through the first session before anyone found out about Kes’s sole combat experience thusfar.  It was a field exercise, one of the ones designed to use physical exertion to break your mental resistance down. After a week and a half of shorter-term endurance events with nights in barracks, they were then given heavy packs and had to make it from Point A to Point B in a deliberately insufficient span of time over the course of three days. There were trainers making the run with them but they were switched out for fresh ones every night, so the new arrivals would show up as you were setting up camp and be obnoxiously well-rested and make you feel shitty about it.

Knowing what it was all about didn’t really make it easier to deal with.

There were five people in Kes’s squad, and the other four were all fresh off rotations in Infantry. They’d made light fun of Kes for being fresh out of Recon instead, since Recon patrols rarely saw combat, but Kes hadn’t set them straight. And so they called him Recon Baby most of the time, and he didn’t care. All five of them were human, though other squads had some xenos. Inti was female, dark-skinned and Outer Rim sharp. Halco was male, from the lower levels of Coruscant, and his teeth were filed into points. Jaro was another male, so pale as to look alien, from some very cold world. Kuro was agender, thin and slight and wiry and fierce. All of them were older than Kes, and all of them considered themselves very tough, and they weren’t wrong, but none of them had anything near as much woodcraft as Kes did, and by the afternoon of the first day of the through hike they all knew to defer to him to pick the trail route when terrain got tough.

That first night passed without incident, and they were almost on the impossible schedule despite everything. Jaro had blisters healing from an earlier event, but they were all invested in making sure his bandages held, and he kept up just fine and didn’t injure himself further. The objective specified that they all had to arrive, so they weren’t going to leave him behind. Kes wasn’t stupid enough to be optimistic about it, but he was secretly glad that his own blisters had healed clean and weren’t a problem anymore.

The second night, the new trainer showed up and looked at Kes and immediately said, “Holy shit, you’re Knife Guy,” and Kes looked up from where he was using that selfsame knife to cut a tent stake from a branch and realized what the guy meant.

“Yeah, where’d he get a knife?” Kuro asked. “Those aren’t standard issue.”

Halco produced a knife from thin air-- a much nastier knife than Kes’s, a wickedly fast folding knife, and said, “What kind of person doesn’t carry a knife?”

Kes looked at the trainer, and said, “Yeah, everyone has knives,” trying to give her a significant look. But nobody around here respected Significant Looks, and it made him long for polite society in a way he normally didn’t.

“No, no,” the trainer said; she was a hard-bitten Mikkian, bright yellow with resplendent head-tentacles. She snapped her fingers. “Dameron. Recon Patrol 33.”

“Yeah,” Inti said, “he’s our Recon Baby.”

The trainer laughed. “Baby,” she said. “He killed fourteen Stormtroopers with a knife and his brass fuckin’ balls. Is that it? Is that _the_ knife?”

Kes scowled, stripped the last hunk out of the stick, and shoved the knife back into its sheath. It was; he’d boiled it, scrubbed it, sharpened it, and oiled it obsessively, and it was spotless and gleaming now. “I don’t wanna talk about it,” he said, tying the rope to the stake and shoving the stake into the dirt.

“What?” Halco said, blinking.

“You guys really didn’t know that?” the trainer asked, incredulous.

“Wait, really?” Inti asked.

“Yeah,” the trainer said. “Holy shit. Knife Guy, you really didn’t tell anybody?”

Kes stood up. “It’s not the kind of thing to boast about,” he said. “They thought I was crazy and almost threw me out.”

“You saved everyone in that patrol, and the mission!” the trainer said. “They shoulda gave you a medal!”

“When the hell was this?” Halco demanded.

“Last week! Or like, two weeks ago now, or something,” the trainer said. “It’s how he got offered this training billet. He seriously killed fourteen Stormtroopers one at a time with just the knife, and then he took their comms and pretended to their comrades like they were all still alive. It was insane.”

Everyone was staring at Kes. He could feel that his face had gone hot. “I had to,” he said. “They had a walker, if they knew we were there they would have annihilated us.”

“Why are you defensive about this?” the trainer asked. “That’s _awesome_.”

“We’re not _savages_ ,” Kes said. “We don’t brag about killing sentients.”

“Stormtroopers aren’t sentients,” Halco scoffed.

Kes turned slowly to look at him, feeling like everything slowed down. Words bubbled up in his mind and pressed against the back of his throat but none formed into sentences, so he just stared at Halco for a long moment. No one spoke, and finally the pressure in Kes’s chest subsided enough for him to say, very calmly, “That’s not true, and talk like that isn’t useful.”

“I wouldn’t fuck with him,” the trainer said.

“Are you _defending_ them?” Halco asked, bristling. He had an annoying habit of wanting to “win” conversations, and Kes had never bothered standing up to him before.

“Lying to yourself isn’t bravery,” Kes said, too upset to back down just to make peace. “Pretending that killing a man is somehow different when he’s in armor isn’t going to help anyone.”

“What are you, some kind of pacifist?” Halco sneered.

Kes stared at him, but was saved from answering by Kuro, who snarled, “Yo, fuckstick, he killed fourteen guys with his bare hands, you fuckin’ _think_ he’s a pacifist?”

Inti laughed merrily. “That is pretty goofy, Halco,” she said. “But, Kes, why didn’t you say anything at all? It’s not like you had to brag about it to tell us. We’ve been assuming you had no combat experience.”

“Recon Baby’s humble,” Jaro said, looming up out of the undergrowth. “Maybe we could learn something from him.” He eyed Halco. Jaro and Halco had clashed a couple of times, and it was only because there was no time for it that nothing had come of it.

“What I want to learn is how you kill a Stormtrooper with just a knife,” Kuro said. “I don’t care if they’re sentients or what, I want to make them dead, and I want to know as many ways how as possible.”

Kes eyed em, and looked around at the others. “Maybe if we get all this campsite set up before it’s fucking dark out,” he said, “I’ll tell you how you kill fourteen Stormtroopers with a knife.”

 

They made it closer to the objective, in the end, than any of the other groups, but they still failed. “You’re all dead,” the trainer told them cheerfully, as her alarm sounded to let them know they’d fallen short. They’d been going as fast as they possibly could, and everyone’s legs were shaky from the effort, but they’d been so determined; no one had known exactly how much time was left, so they’d been going at absolute top speed for two hours now, trying to get every meter they could.

Various of the others groaned; Inti flopped melodramatically onto the ground. Kes had checked out some time before, so he just stopped, and nodded, and then stood patiently next to the trainer waiting for more orders.

“Sometimes I think you’re a robot,” she said to him, eyeing him uneasily.

It was too much trouble to look right at her. Kes just nodded again. Eventually he noticed that his knees were unsteady, so he sat down on the ground. The others were already sitting on the ground. Kuro was crying and trying not to let it show. Jaro was pulling off his boots, because his blisters were agony, and Inti was helping him. Halco was crouching off to one side muttering darkly. Everyone else seemed very worked up. That seemed exhausting, so Kes ignored them.

“Seriously,” the trainer said. “Does nothing bother you?”

It took Kes a long moment to realize she must still be speaking to him. He looked around, confirming nobody else was within the angle of her view, but still pointed at himself quizzically. She nodded.

“We _knew_ it was impossible, didn’t we?” Kes said. The others stared at him. “The distance they gave us, the terrain-- a standard human couldn’t do it in the allotted time. Just like everything else. The point is how far you got. We won, nobody else got this far. Why be mad about it?” It was hard to speak, checked-out as he was, but he managed to muster it up.

No one had an answer for that. Then the trainer said, “How are you so sure it was impossible?”

Kes stared at her, then at the others. “I can read,” he said, a little defensively. No one here knew about his problem. “And I know how many kilometers I can walk in a day in this kind of terrain, and how many days I can do it for. There was no way I could make this distance, and I figured I’m pretty good at this so not many people would be able to do it if I couldn’t.”

The others were still all staring at him. “You didn’t mention this,” Jaro said finally. “Why didn’t you mention this?”

“Knife Guy is not big on mentioning things,” Kuro sighed. “Haven’t we figured this out by now?”

Kes was hoping the nickname would go away, so he wasn’t reacting to it, which wasn’t difficult when he was checked-out, and was nearly impossible when he was checked back in. He had checked back in enough now that he flinched; he couldn’t help but remember the way the knife felt parting flesh whenever anyone brought it up, which was a good reason not to ever check back in because that was the only time it bothered him.

“It didn’t seem like it needed to be discussed,” Kes said, on-edge and angry about being on-edge. “I used to be better at this sort of thing before I got my brains picked out by an interrogation droid, I’m only doing the best I can.”

“Anyway it’s basic pattern recognition,” Kuro said. “Haven’t all the other things been impossible? That’s what you do, you get as much as you can done and they calculate your score based off it. I can’t believe I didn’t put it together until now.”

They all looked at the trainer, who looked uncomfortable. “Well,” she said, with the air of someone admitting something, “yeah.”

“Otherwise it would be too easy,” Kuro said.

“It’s technically possible to complete the course,” the trainer said. Everyone just looked at her. She shrugged. “Pathfinders have done crazy stuff. By the end of training, you’ll be doing crazy stuff. Though I gotta admit, as far as we’ve reached is on the spectrum of crazy stuff. You guys are doing really well.”

Mollified, the others gathered around a little closer to wait, in much better spirits. Kes managed to settle himself down without checking out again, though his mind was drifting with weariness. They finally heard the transport coming to get them, and Jaro started trying to get his boots back on.

“Don’t bother,” the trainer said, “you’re only gonna make those worse.”

When the transport arrived, the person who got off it was familiar. It took Kes a moment to recognize that it was Captain Tarak himself. The others didn’t know Tarak, but the trainer noticed his insignia and jumped up.

Tarak wasn’t looking at anyone else. He saw Kes right away, and came straight over to him, and crouched down before Kes had a chance to get up. “Stay where you are,” Tarak said. He didn’t look mad, he looked upset, and sorrowful.

“They did really well,” the trainer said.

Tarak paused, and looked up. “Oh,” he said. “I’m not even briefed on what this exercise was. Congratulations, I’m sure that’s correct, they’ll debrief everyone on the transport.” He was so upset he was pale, and Kes couldn’t stop staring at him.

“Someone’s dead,” Kes said, and it came out soft. “Or-- worse. Something worse than that.” It was like he was watching it from the outside, he could see it so clearly.

Tarak looked back at him. “This-- yes,” he said, faltering a little. Kes didn’t know the man well, but he knew he was extremely well-composed most of the time. “I--” he hesitated.

Kes watched him. It had to be a large-scale disaster, but why would Tarak have come straight to him? Why wouldn’t he just address the group? “Something very bad has happened,” Kes said. “You need to tell us what it was.”

Tarak nodded, composed himself a little, and rolled forward to sit on his knees. The others all leaned in, including the pilot of the transport, who was standing just outside the ship and looked wrung-out and distraught too. She knew, then. Kes looked back at Tarak.

“The Empire has demonstrated a new extremely powerful weapon,” Tarak said. His hands were shaking and he clasped them in front of his waist. “First they demonstrated it on the ancient city of Jedha, and obliterated the entire city.”

Someone exclaimed something; maybe Jaro.

“Captain Andor, who I know you know,” and Tarak looked at Kes, who nodded faintly, “had a lead on information about this weapon, and went on a mission to an Imperial records depot on the planet Scarif. The Rebellion launched a mission to support him, and sent a couple of dozen ground troops, and then a few Hammerhead cruisers and some assorted starcraft. The Empire deployed the weapon against us, and destroyed the records depot on Scarif, along with all our personnel on the ground, but information was beamed out before the blast, and was recovered. The navy we’d sent in support dispersed as Imperial reinforcements arrived, but not before both sustaining and inflicting heavy losses.”

“That’s open war,” the trainer said, low and awed.

Andor was dead, then. That was why Tarak had come to tell Kes personally. “I see,” Kes said. He had to confirm it. “Andor’s dead.”

“Yes,” Tarak said. “He was among the lost. We have transmissions proving he was on the planet, and no one who landed took off again.”

Kes nodded slowly. Well, that was bad. It would hurt, when he checked back in. The person he was sometimes would be upset, certainly. Andor was the last information he’d had about his father, and he’d put off hearing the rest of it, and now he never would, so that was a damn shame.

More importantly, though, was the fact that this was open war. “So we’re really at war,” Kes said.

Tarak nodded, steeling himself, and it was about then that Kes realized there had to be more bad news. “So the information we got from Scarif,” he went on, and everyone was dead silent, staring at him.

“About the weapon,” the trainer said, through evidently-numb lips.

Tarak nodded again. “It was sent to a ship that was destroyed, but not before they managed to put it onto a chip that they sent to another ship. The other ship was an Alderaanian diplomatic vessel, and Senator Organa was on it.”

“Leia Organa,” Kes filled in, because he was pretty up, now, on which Organas were doing what.

“Yes,” Tarak said.

Leia was dead. That was a hard one to take. Kes wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He poked at it. Andor’s last mission failed and Organa was dead. Well, Bail would take it hard, surely. Kes couldn’t access any of his own emotions about it yet. Instead he just nodded and looked attentively at Tarak.

“The Empire knew the plans were on that ship,” Tarak said. “So they tracked it down, and detained them. We have reason to believe Organa got the plans off the ship somehow, just because it’s something she would have done. But they took her prisoner and we’re not sure what happened next.”

“But she’s dead,” Kes said, because he just wanted a tidy answer before he figured out how to feel about it.

“That’s still unconfirmed,” Tarak said. “The Empire deployed its superweapon again, and this time they destroyed an entire planet.” He stopped, visibly trying to regain composure, breathed in and then out again.

“Which planet,” the trainer said hoarsely.

Tarak looked at Kes, inexplicably, and then said, “Alderaan.”

Inti yelped. “That can’t be true,” she said.

Kuro let out a horrible low groan. “Alderaan!”

“How much of the planet was destroyed?” Jaro asked, not understanding.

“All of it,” Tarak said. “There’s a debris field. There was no notice, there was no evacuation. There are no survivors.”

“But it’s-- but they-- they can’t do that!” Jaro said.

“They did,” Tarak said. He looked at Kes, who was vaguely aware that he should react, but couldn’t reach any part of himself to have a reaction to that. “We can’t possibly tally everyone who was on the planet, but we know based on transmissions and the like that certain people certainly were. Both Bail and Breha Organa are confirmed to have been on the planet, and so are certainly dead. We’re working on confirming others. Meanwhile, Leia Organa must have given up information for them to have taken such a measure, so we’re assuming everything she knew about is compromised. We’re recalling all trainees, including all of you, and then we’re going to evacuate Yavin IV. We know our prior site of Dantooine is compromised.”

“I need to go back to Yavin IV,” Kes said, and he wasn’t sure why he’d said it.

Tarak glanced at him, concerned or puzzled or something, and said, “We have to evacuate it. We can use help, if you know how to load cargo.”

“I do,” Kes said. “That’s what I did before-- before.” His mind was turning over slowly, like it was going to arrive at some big conclusion but hadn’t yet, and it was distracting him. This was a crisis and he had to react to the crisis. He could be useful, he would do useful things. He caught up with an earlier thought. “So we don’t know if Leia Organa is dead, but we know Bail Organa is.” That was hard. And Breha, who had always been kind. A shame. And-- everyone. A whole planet. Everyone. His mother, and Shara, and Norasol, and Poe, and Tito and Zara, Marita, Ori, and everyone. He nodded to himself. That was really going to hurt when he got around to reacting to it.

“Yes,” Tarak said, “that’s right. It’s likely she is, but he certainly is, we have almost no doubt of it.”

“Wasn’t your-- family?” Kuro said hesitantly to Kes.

“Yes,” Kes said. “Everyone.”

“So we’re recalling all units,” Tarak said gently, “and if you want to come to Yavin IV, you can, Dameron, we can use you, but in the meantime, all of you, your training is on hiatus.” He raised a hand when someone, maybe Halco, groaned in anguish-- they’d made a big deal that training once begun could not be paused and resumed, and even if you were injured toward the end, you’d have to repeat the whole thing. “We’ll give you credit for this session, it’s an unusual circumstance. Now’s not the time to worry about it.”

“As long as I can be useful,” Kes said. He was missing a part, somewhere, like internally he was hollow, like most of him had died maybe, but quietly, without a sound, just been pulled out and replaced with nothing. He was nothing but this external shell that went on polite instinct, so he was going to keep doing that until he ceased to exist entirely. It seemed easiest.

“Of course,” Tarak said.

Kes stood up and waited until the pilot opened the door of the transport, and walked on and sat down on one of the benches. The others followed, and everyone hesitated rather than sitting next to him. In the end, Tarak sat next to him, last of all on the transport.

Tarak touched Kes’s arm. “Reports suggest there wouldn’t have been time for any kind of panic or anything when they used the weapon on Alderaan,” he said quietly, in Iberican. “There are eyewitnesses from the other places it was used. It was some kind of superlaser, and it operated so quickly that there was barely time to even see it. Apparently it looks like a moon, and just appears hanging in the sky, and then there’s a flash of light and then everything is gone.”

“Alderaan had planetary shields,” Kes said, because he’d managed to get enough of his brain to work to remember that.

“Reports indicate that this weapon was powerful enough to instantly overwhelm them,” Tarak said. “Scarif had a planetary shield too, and a more intense one than Alderaan.”

Kes nodded. “I understand that you’re trying to give me comfort,” he said awkwardly, “but I’m, I’m not in a place to appreciate it.”

Tarak nodded, and pressed his shoulder against Kes’s. “I don’t imagine you are,” he said, and then let silence spin out for a while, as the transport took off. But the silence couldn’t last forever. Finally Tarak spoke again. “How much of your family was there?”

Kes shook his head. Words were complicated. He was tired. Maybe that was what he felt-- tired.

“I’m just saying,” Tarak said, “that it would be completely understandable if you went to join the survivors instead of continuing with us, you know?”

“They were all there,” Kes said, dredging up words with great effort. “All of them. There are no survivors. No one is left. There is nowhere for me to go.” He was angry, then, faintly, which was something at least. “If you’re saying you think I’ll definitely be too crazy to be useful now, you’d might as well just say it. You already stood up for me once, I don’t expect you to put yourself on the line to do it again.”

Tarak stared at him, taken aback, but with an awful soft something in his eyes, maybe pity. “I, that’s not what--” but he trailed off. “I’m sorry, Dameron,” he said finally. “No, it’s up to you what you want to do, of course.”

“I want to do what I said,” Kes told him, then turned his head away and checked out completely.

 

When it came to get off the transport Kes couldn’t stand up. He wasn’t in any pain, really, but his legs just didn’t work. The others were having trouble too, but from the noises they were making, they were all in pain from the exertion of their trip and the emotional upheaval. Kes felt nothing, but his legs didn’t respond properly, and his arms were shaking too much to let him pull himself along or crawl. So he let them carry him from the transport to the larger ship they were collecting all of the trainee groups onto, and all the other personnel they were evacuating. But they stuck him in a medbay, and a scanner came on with a high-pitched whine, and Kes tried to get up and leave but his legs still didn’t work and the medical staff prevented him, so instead he slid off into catatonia, resisting interrogation, resisting interrogation, waiting for the pain to come-- and it did, then, screaming through his limbs, and part of him thought it was the IT-0 and part of him thought it was just all the pain he hadn’t been feeling on that whole training exercise. The Imperial droid technician, or maybe a Rebellion medic, was polite and concerned, but kept asking him things and he told him, politely but firmly in return, that he couldn’t answer any questions, either the information they needed was in his file or it wasn’t something he could help them with. He wasn’t the right person for them to be asking questions.

He got tired of saying it in Basic, so he switched over to Iberican, and after a while, the droid technician went away and another one came, a woman, and asked him questions more softly. He stopped answering entirely except to remind her, occasionally, in Iberican, that she had the wrong guy and he wasn’t going to be able to answer any questions that weren’t already answered in his file.

Into the midst of this gray haze of nothingness, a familiar voice came, someone he knew, speaking Basic. “Yes, he’s speaking Iberican, very astute,” the voice said. Tarak, his mind supplied. He knew Tarak from somewhere.

Kes blinked, and focused his eyes. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, in Iberican. “Can you tell them that I’m telling the truth? Everything they need to know is in my file.”

“Can you believe there’s no one else on this damn boat who’s registered as speaking Iberican,” Tarak said, “and that these assholes are so dumb they thought it was Kalikian and hauled some poor radar tech down here to try and reason with you.”

“I told them in Basic to read my file,” Kes said. “I switched because they weren’t listening to me anyway so why bother trying?”

“Are you in pain?” Tarak asked, frowning. Kes had been trying not to react to it, because it only encouraged them, but the shocks were running up and down his legs and it was extremely distracting.

“Why do you want to know?” Kes asked, suddenly wary. He didn’t remember them ever using Tarak’s face to interrogate him, but that was the kind of thing they did all the time. They gave you a vague likeness and waited for your brain to fill it in as someone you knew.

“If you’re in pain they should be treating it,” Tarak said. “Are you having leg cramps? Everyone else is.”

Kes stared at him for a long moment. No, he hadn’t met Tarak until after he’d been freed from interrogation. Unless that was what they wanted him to think. It was hard to keep these sorts of things straight in his mind. “I can’t tell you anything,” he said. “You have to check my file.” Appeal to an outside reality was his only chance. Anything that led to him answering a question directly was probably a trick.

Tarak chewed on his lips thoughtfully, then said in Basic to the person observing them, “He keeps asking if you’ve checked his file. I’m assuming you’ve done so, and have taken into account whatever he’d possibly be referring to?”

“Uh,” said the droid technician, or medic, or maybe radar tech or whoever was still standing there. “Well, no, we’re trying to assess his current condition.”

“I don’t know a lot,” Tarak said, visibly irritated, “but I _do_ know in medicine it’s helpful to know if a patient has any known conditions before trying to figure out what’s currently wrong.” He stood up and went over to the holo interface, shouldered the tech or whatever aside, and pulled up something, Kes couldn’t read it and looked away because it hurt his head and everything hurt and he didn’t remember where he was but he knew he could die of thirst in just three and a half days of this if he could avoid exhibiting any distress that reminded them to put an IV in him. That had been his plan before, and it had failed several times, but he still had hope of escaping that way. One of these times someone would forget.

“Huh,” Tarak said. “Big screaming red notice not to put him in a room with a XT4000 scanner.” Tarak, the technician, and Kes all turned in unison to look at the big XT4000 scanner whining away in the corner. “Says here, these scanners make the same background sound as IT-0 droids and anyone who’s survived interrogation should never be examined with one. Think maybe that’s what’s giving him so much trouble?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” the tech said, then yelped, “Hey! There’s a shutdown protocol, don’t just--”

“Maybe I’ll read the fucking manual after you read his fucking file,” Tarak said, and the whining noise abruptly stopped, sudden silence echoing.

Kes waited, not daring to believe it was over. That was always a trap; sometimes they turned the thing off and then a person would come and ask him questions. Over by the holo interface the tech and Tarak were having an intense, low-voiced conversation, and Kes waited for the pain stimuli to subside, but they didn’t. They must be something from a different tool, not the droid, and he was so tired he couldn’t figure out what was doing it. He wanted it to stop, but it was by seizing on when you wanted things that they got you to answer their questions, so he pushed that back and focused on nothing, absolutely nothing.

After a while Tarak came and spoke to him again, and Kes didn’t spare him any attention, still too busy focusing on nothing at all. Eventually, though, the repetition got him. It was a date, and a location, and it was-- maybe today’s date-- a location on a ship-- Finally, curious, Kes blinked himself back into awareness-- how could he tell? It was like dreaming, it was like hallucinating, but would he have hallucinated Tarak?

“Who are you really?” he asked Tarak, before he could stop himself. It was a mistake to give them an in like that, but he was pretty beat-down and if this was the first crack he showed, that wasn’t such a bad job. The only thing he absolutely couldn't do was give them Bail Organa. He could break down about just about anything else. He had some leeway. He had... something about that pinged at him, and he shook his head, blinking and taking in more of the room, like he was waking up. Maybe he _was_ waking up.

Tarak frowned at him, but then his expression cleared. “Hey,” he said. “Hi, Kes Dameron. Welcome back. I’m Captain Kal Tarak of the Pathfinders. We met a couple of weeks ago at a meeting. My granny had a bit of Oaxctli weaving about Nishi and-- Nixi and Buna. I told all the Basicos you weren’t crazy.”

They’d never spoken Iberican to him, was a thing, Kes remembered, and he remembered that meeting and it was after the rescue that he was pretty sure was real, with Cassian Andor, and there was something he ought to remember about Cassian Andor. “Why the fuck does my whole body hurt so bad?” he asked. “I figured the droid was doing it but there’s not really a droid here, is there?”

“No,” Tarak said, and he looked relieved. “No, it was a med scanner. I knew it, Dameron, I knew I was right about you. Hey, it’s a good thing I guess nobody else on this ship speaks Iberican. They hauled me out of a meeting to come figure out what your deal was, and I’m glad to have gotten out. Everything’s shit, kid.”

Kes shivered. He hurt real bad. “Yeah but why does it hurt so much,” he said, breathing through it.

“What hurts?” Tarak asked. “The med tech was trying to figure it out but instead of asking you he turned on the damn scanner.”

“Legs,” Kes said. “Back. Muscles. Cramps? Shooting. Fucking sucks.”

Tarak turned to the med tech and translated, with a lot more embellishment. Kes let him, but as the med tech turned away, he said, in Basic, “Why are you translating for me?”

“I don’t know, kid,” Tarak said. “I think you’ve had a hard day, though.”

“No drugs,” Kes said in alarm, as the med tech came back.

“I’m not gonna knock you out,” the tech said. “I’m going to rehydrate you, rebalance your electrolytes, take the swelling down, and give you a mild pain reliever and maybe a muscle relaxant.”

Kes considered him warily.

“I’ve read your file now,” the tech said, weary and resigned. “I’m sorry I didn’t read it first. There’s a note here about what kind of drugs not to give you. I won’t give you the wrong kind.”

“Okay,” Kes said, because he was exhausted and desperate and the hallucination of the Imperial droid was sort of shredding away. He was shaking all over now, which made it hard to focus, but he managed to move his hand and touch Tarak’s arm, take his wrist to be sure he was really there, and say, “You told me-- Cassian Andor’s dead.”

Tarak turned to him, and nodded slowly, sympathetic, taking both of Kes’s hands in his hands. “I did, Kes. It’s true.”

Kes was shaking even harder now. “You told me--” He couldn’t say it.

“Alderaan,” Tarak said softly.

The med tech smoothed his hand across the back of Kes’s neck, antisceptic, thumbed on the little stim patches with their tiny needles to put the drugs in, then took one of Kes’s arms from Tarak, and put the injector in with some skill, and Kes held tightly to Tarak’s hand with the other hand, because this was like how he’d been treated in Imperial captivity too, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to be free, really, wasn’t sure he wanted this to be real.

As his cramping muscles unlocked, Kes’s shaking steadied enough for him to pull out his little holoviewer. “My baby’s dead,” he said quietly.

“Baby?” Tarak was still holding his hand.

Kes turned on the viewer, and pulled up the picture of Shara and Poe looking at each other. If you could wear out a picture by looking, this one would already be worn thin, but it hung there, bluish and unaltered. It was the last one. There wouldn’t be any more. “My wife,” he said, “and my baby. Alderaan.”

“Xacristo,” Tarak hissed, “I’m sorry, kid.”

The fact that Tarak was crying too didn’t really help. Kes sobbed until he passed out, and when he woke up, they were disembarking from the ship.

 

He staggered to his feet, found that his legs would hold him, and went to find out who was going for Yavin IV. They didn’t want to take him, until he found the duty sergeant and told her his specialty was cargo loading. She didn’t know him from anyone, but she took in his Pathfinder trainee insignia and considered it, and when he made the sleeve-rolling-up gesture that Fronteras used to subtly refer to their protectees, she tilted her head back a little in recognition.

(Kes’s own protection tattoo wasn’t really on his forearm. His mother had worried that it was too visible, too obvious, and had insisted he get the marking at the base of his neck, low down where a shirt collar would cover it. But she and Norasol both had theirs in the expected place, on their left forearms just below the elbow.) (Had had. They were dead now, obliterated, no bodies to bury or bones to visit. It was a profound desecration. Kes couldn’t contemplate it beyond that.)

So he got himself on the massive cargo ship headed for Yavin IV. “There’s a real good chance we’re going to get killed as soon as we get there,” the duty sergeant told them all. “And we won’t get to salvage anything. The Empire’s planet-killer is absolutely going to come for us next.”

“But we can try,” said one of the other volunteers, and Kes did not say, _I hope the planet-killer gets us_ , because he didn’t actually hope for anything.

His baby was dead. There wasn’t much to hope for.


	2. Enduring

Kubira stood next to the loading dock fixing her headscarf to hold her braids in place and looking down at the latest recruit to their last-ditch foolish effort. He was an Iberican, gold-brown and black-eyed as they often were, and he was young and pretty and well-built, and he looked capable enough. But he was all sharp edges, something lean and desperate about him, and the worst thing was that he was completely dead behind the eyes. He didn’t speak, beyond giving her his name and confirming that he’d done cargo handling before. (Sergeant Anaya, who Kubira knew well, had done the Fronteras sleeve-rolling gesture to explain him, and he’d probably noticed but hadn’t reacted either way.)

He looked like he’d just come off some hard duty somewhere, in a scuffed-up and dirt-marked uniform with a Spec Forces sigil on it in trainee colors, and he moved like a man in a borrowed body. There were autoinjector marks on his forearm and stim patch marks on his neck.  
And absolutely nothing behind his eyes.

Kubira took advantage of retying the knot in her headscarf to observe him and think of what to say or do. There was no time to fool around, no time to reject anyone, but what _was_ he?

He just stood and waited, like a droid that hadn’t been given any instructions. Finally she said, “You know this might be a suicide mission, yes? We may not be able to get ourselves out in time.”

His eyes shifted a little to look not quite at her. She thought he might speak, but he just nodded.

“So I guess we’ll do the best we can,” Kubira went on.

He nodded again, eyes drifting away to look at the ship’s yawning maw of a cargo bay. The others were scrambling like ants, shifting pallets of crucial gear. There had already been a logistical plan in place to evacuate the base, to salvage as much as possible, to ensure that sensitive information was disposed of properly, and they were grateful to have it, but it was still chaos down here; nothing was ever where it was supposed to have been, and they were having to adjust on the fly.

She lowered her arms, and his eyes flickered back toward her, tracking the motion without looking at her face, like a predator maybe. She crossed her arms over her chest and he kept his eyes down. A flicker of pain crossed his face, nearly imperceptible and quickly squashed down. She watched him compose himself again, tight control and no emotion visible, and decided no, he didn’t look like a predator. He looked like a beaten dog, like he’d had everything inside him knocked out of him and he was surviving by shutting down any part of him that could still feel.

It was a familiar look. “All right, then,” she said. “We’d better get started. You’ve been checked out by the medics?” They were all on stimulants to keep them going, and she figured he had to be too, but you couldn’t use them unregulated.

He nodded, no expression, no eye contact. “You do more loading, or logistics?” she asked.

“Both,” he said, his voice a dry quiet rasp.

“I got logistics people,” she said. “I’ll have you do loading until you need a break, ok?” He nodded, and she pointed him at the crew, calling out to the most senior one to send someone on a break.

He moved away, and she went back to her second, who was cursing at the datapad. “We getting there?”

“Gonna be hours yet,” her second said-- Patra, her sister, endlessly solid and competent. “How long you figure we have?”

Kubira shook her head. “I don’t know near enough about what’s going on to venture a guess,” she said.

“Who’s the new guy?” Patra asked. “You seemed kind of-- like you didn’t know what to make of him.”

“I figure he’s broken,” Kubira said, “but we need all hands. I’d never take him on for a long haul but clearly, we’ll be lucky if any of us survive this. But watch him, I don’t think he’ll make it long.”

Kubira was distracted by plenty of other things, but she kept her eye on the dead-eyed young man intermittently, when she had the attention to spare. He worked tirelessly for longer than she’d figured on. She’d figured he’d flag and slow and need a break, but he didn’t.

Instead, he just worked top speed until he collapsed, so she hadn’t been entirely wrong. He got one more droid loaded correctly and directed to the right spot inside the ship, then fell over, and she noticed the deviation in the loaders’ rhythm before she figured out what had gone wrong. One of the other loaders made an alarmed noise, and diverted one of the loading droids to pick up the fallen man in its appendage.

They had a medic standing by, dividing her time among all the loading crews, and she ran over in a flash when someone shouted for her. “Which one is it?” she asked.

Kubira watched them approaching and tried to remember the kid’s name. She had to pull it up on her datapad. “Dameron,” she said.

“Ohh,” the medic said, like that meant something to her.

“What?” Kubira asked. “You know him?”

The medic nodded. “Hard story,” she said, and the droid came up and carefully laid out the fallen man on the step. Kubira sent it back to the others, then came to stand next to where the medic crouched.

Dameron was conscious but feeble, and clearly in distress; looked like a massive leg cramp had felled him. It was a side effect of overwork and exhaustion combined with the stimulants they relied on in crunch times like this. Kubira herself almost never used them, but this was an exceptional circumstance, and if she survived she expected she’d pay a heavy price.

“--can-- keep-- going,” Dameron was saying, gasping. The medic had already rolled up his trouser leg and stuck a stim directly to the affected muscle, easing his trouble considerably, but it was obvious the man was near the end of what he could take. And he still managed to look blank behind the eyes, even writhing in pain.

“I say he’s done,” Kubira said. “I know it’s life or death but I won’t watch a man die. You dose him up and send him back out, he’s going to die.”

“That’s a fair point,” the medic said.

“No,” Dameron said, hissing between his teeth.

“So sedate him instead,” Kubira said, “give him fluids, and load him into the ship. We might as well evacuate him. He’s young, he’ll recover.”

Dameron shook his head. “I’m already dead,” he said, and laughed humorlessly.

Kubira turned to look at him. “How old are you, child?” she asked. He didn’t answer, and the medic glanced up from her datapad.

“Uh,” she said, “Twenty-one years, standard.”

Kubira shook her head slightly. “My son is only two years younger than you,” she said.

“ _My_ son is _dead_ ,” Dameron said, meeting her eyes for the first time, showing emotion for the first time; he was angry. “Alderaan. Six weeks old. You want to tell me what I got to live for?” He managed to sit up. “I got an answer: the Death Star is coming for us and I don’t give a _fuck_.”

Kubira met his gaze; she’d stared down a lot of angry young men in her day, and she was bigger than him and twice his age and they always, always regretted speaking to her like that. But she’d never lost a baby to planetary annihilation. So, she inclined her head slightly, conceding the point.

“Fair,” she said. “I’m low on fucks to give too, son. I’m sorry about your baby. Don’t be so suicidal you screw it up for the rest of us, we’re trying to make it out with as much as we can.”

He dropped his gaze. “I won’t,” he said. “I’m-- not _trying_ to die. I just. I don’t care.”

“I understand,” she said. She looked at the medic, who had tears in her eyes. “It’s up to him, but if he stays, I’m moving him to logistics.”

“All right,” Dameron said.

He joined her in a moment, limping slightly and blank again, dead-eyed, and she set him to the task of coordinating the load list with the workers organizing the loading droids, which was a slightly less-physical task, and one where she could keep a closer eye on him.

He made it a few more hours, and they finished loading the ship. Another ship came in and set up at the next dock, and it had brought more crew with it, so Kubira went through and dismissed many of her loaders to get on the completed cargo ship and go with it to its destination. Predictably, Dameron refused, so she made him sit down with her and wait for the new ship’s set up to be completed.

They were drinking linsa tea, which was the traditional measure against nausea that helped if you had to take stimulants. His hands were shaking, so he had to hold the teacup with both hands. Kubira wasn’t in much better shape, but she could at least hold the cup. Patra brought another tea container over to the sitting area, and sat down.

“No,” Kubira said, “you’re getting on that one, Patra.”

“I will stay with you,” Patra said stubbornly.

“You’re the younger,” Kubira said. “We cannot stay together. I will join you when I can. You know how this works.”

“I won’t leave you,” Patra said.

“Sister,” Kubira said, leveling a look at her.

Patra breathed in, and let her breath out slowly, looking away.

“They need you. We can’t both stay in the same place at a time like this. You know that. We must split up. You have to be the one to go.” Kubira poured Patra a cup of linsa, and held it out to her.

Patra took the cup, shook her head slowly, but then looked up at Kubira. A tear slid down her cheek, and she said softly, “I don’t want to leave you.”

“But you will,” Kubira said. She would; she knew she would. Someone had to be matriarch. The next generation needed her guidance; the oldest among the generation were starting to have children of their own, and it was essential to have a matriarch at a time like that, and none of the others had enough experience. If Patra died too, the children would have to go begging to one of the other bloodlines to be taken in, and in all the current chaos that was not likely to go well for them.

Patra sighed. “I will,” she said. Kubira reached over and put her hand on Patra’s arm, and they sat like that for a long moment. At last, Patra got up and walked away, and Kubira turned her head so as not to watch her go because that would be unlucky.

Turning her head meant she looked at Dameron. Kubira and Patra had been speaking in their own people’s patois, but it wasn’t such a thick dialect that the average traveler wouldn’t be able to follow it, and from his expression, he had understood.

“I know it is futile to make you go,” she said to him.

He managed a thin shadow of a smile. “It wouldn’t do any good,” he said. “I am not enough.”

“Have you lost everyone, then?” she asked, understanding him; it wasn’t likely a two-month-old baby had been his only relative on Alderaan. He nodded, closing his eyes, and she clicked her tongue, shaking her head. The skin around his eyes was thin and bruised-looking, stretched over the bones of his young face.

“I shouldn’t have spoken to an elder as I did,” he said softly, haltingly; speech was clearly difficult for him.

“I’ve heard worse for less cause,” she said, “and it was truth. The Death Star is coming.” She couldn’t recall, now, if they knew that for sure. She shook her head. “To destroy a whole planet-- it is obscenity.”

He nodded slowly, wearily. A ship came in overhead, too fast, darting in with an impossibly tight curve to arc into one of the loading bays. It had a bright shiny logo on the side, and Kubira recognized it as an Alderaanian logo. She glanced over at Dameron, and saw his face twist as he recognized it too. There’d be a lot of that about, she knew; Alderaan hadn’t had any military of its own, but it had supported a lot of vessels, many of which would still be out there.

He looked down, and she could see that the tea wasn’t working well for him; he was fighting nausea. “There’s a basin,” she said. “Should you have the need.”

He nodded tightly, taking deep breaths and staring down into his teacup. She reached over and patted his shoulder. “Dameron,” she said. “If you survive this, whatever happens, we are the clan of Unshira, related to the Oranshi. We’re independent, not beholden to the gangs. Patra will remember your face. You can apply to her for protection.”

He glanced up, and made the sleeve-rolling Fronteras protectorate gesture. She nodded. “That is fine,” she said, “we have no quarrel with them for the most part. May I see your marking?”

He nodded, but instead of rolling up his sleeve, he bent his head forward and tugged at his collar. She stood, and bent, gently pulling at his shirt collar to bare the skin at the top of his back, below where his neck met his spine. There was a larger tattoo extending down into his clothing, but the Fronteras sigil with the distinctive decorative detailing of the Essin clan was right at the top of it.

“Essin,” she said. “Titaba?” Last she’d known, that was their matriarch.

He sat back, breathing deeply, and nodded. “If I survive and you don't I’ll speak to her of you,” Kubira said. “So she knows.”

He nodded again, and a tear slid down his cheek. He was clearly well-raised, someone’s treasured boy, now adrift and alone. And he was right. You couldn’t rebuild, with just a man. A woman could build a new life inside herself, could rebuild a people, could build a family around herself, but a man alone had no choice but to beg a place with strangers, and couldn’t truly be a part of a new people. Not even a respectful, well-raised, hard-working man.

“But if you survive,” she said, “we can find a place for you. Even if I don't. Patra will remember your face and know I sent you.”

He smiled unevenly. “Should there ever be peace again,” he filled in.

She sighed. “Should there ever be peace again,” she conceded. “But you know, there never really has been peace. We make do.” She was still standing, and could see now that the second ship had been pushed properly into position now by the tug-droids. The loading crews were starting to queue up. Dameron followed the direction of her gaze, and started to push himself to his feet.

“Wait,” she said to him. “Eushis is still organizing.” Her brother, her third-in-command, knew how she liked things to go, and she could see him, tall and angular, precious to her, gesturing at someone. “Sit a moment more. We’ll work on this ship, and then the next will be the things the base cannot operate without, and so it must wait. I had planned to go with the second ship. Will you join me, or will you stay with the third?”

“The third,” he said. The third was clearly suicide, really only there to evacuate survivors or to maintain the base until the threat passed without coming to a head. Both were unlikely. She didn’t have to explain that to him, though.

“Then rest,” she said, “and maintain, and I will hand logistics off to you for the third.”

The third ship was already half-loaded, ensconced in a dock and arrayed with the necessary items that had to remain behind, separated out as they had begun to load the first ship and stage the second. They would need to be kept in order, so that they could be loaded after use. It included all of the support items for the starfighters that would be an ineffective, forlorn final defense; there weren’t many, after Scarif. It was a skeleton crew. There was no hope.

But Dameron was competent and reasonably well-trained, despite his youth, and it meant she could take Eushis with her on the second ship. She left Dameron where he was, and went to reorganize, began the work, and sent Eushis over to debrief Dameron.

She was in the thick of the work for the second ship when her comm went off.

“What,” she said impatiently, stepping out of the fracas to answer it. It was one of the senior comms officers. “You need what?”

“Request confirmation of personnel location,” the comms officer said, “looking for a Private Kes Dameron, said to be working with your crew?”

“Affirmative,” she said, and her irritation rose. “Damn it, don’t reassign him, I just reorganized my staffing to use him.” But he had a military rank, so if the military wanted him, they could pull him, and she knew it. Well, Eushis had been resigned to staying with the third ship before, and hadn’t really seemed convinced he wouldn’t still be needed on it. It would be hard to fly away from her little brother, but she had already resigned herself to it once.

“Negative, negative, it’s not reassignment,” the comms officer said. “It’s-- someone’s here looking for him, a personal thing.”

Kubira paused. “Did someone from his family survive?” It was the only good thing she’d heard in days. “Was that-- that ship from Alderaan?”

“Yes,” the comms officer said, “I’m sending someone to you, I just wanted to confirm he’s there.”

“He is,” Kubira said. “Send whoever it is to Dock 8A and I’ll meet them both there, by the sign.”

Among all the rest of the chaos, it was nice to think about something good happening, for once. Even if it was only a brother or something, another family member meant that a family still existed. A family of two was more than double a sole person. She made her way over toward the staging area for the third ship, working as she went, and found Dameron sitting on the ground with the datapad, frowning and ashen under the gold of his skin, but clearly still directing the others.

“Someone’s coming for you,” she said to him.

He looked up, not understanding her. He’d gone blank again, and it took a moment for him to focus on her. How many days, she wondered, since he’d slept? She’d heard about Alderaan 20 hours ago, herself. She watched him catch up, and a flicker of bleak humor passed over his face, though not enough to touch the bleak blankness behind his eyes. “Someone besides the fucking Death Star, you mean?”

“Someone from that ship from Alderaan,” she said, and his expression changed, went wide and sharp, and she knew that feeling too, knew how much hope could hurt. “I don’t know who but the comms officer needed me to confirm your location.”

He scrambled and tried to stand up, and Kubira helped him stand, steadied him so they could walk over to the edge of the loading dock. She steered him to the step they’d painted the dock number sign on, and helped him sit down; neither of his legs was working well. Eushis saw them, and swung over to take the datapad back. “I didn’t figure he’d live long enough,” Eushis said wryly, and Kubira squeezed his sharp-boned shoulder rather than address it. Either there’d be time to talk about it, or there wouldn’t.

Dameron looked to be about on the verge of passing out. She put her hand on his head and watched his shoulders move as he tried to breathe. She didn’t envy him at all; to lose everyone, and then find that one person had survived; it was crueler to hope, and how to weigh your desires? Hope was so cruel, but it was better than despair.

But before the suspense could kill anyone, a young woman burst out of the door from the turbolift passageway, her escorting comms tech trailing breathlessly behind her. “Kes!” the woman shrieked, and Dameron’s head went up.

She was a beautiful young woman, curly-haired, young, bright-faced, willowy. Kubira waved to her and called “over here!” because Dameron had tried to stand up and failed. The young woman turned and saw them and came running.

“Shara!” Dameron said, hoarse, and Kubira managed to help him up just in time for the woman to crash into him. They would both have fallen, but Kubira held on long enough to still the woman’s momentum and help them sink more gracefully to the floor. The woman was sobbing, and Dameron made a low, profound, animal noise, clutching her tightly.

Wife? Sister? Kubira eyed them for a moment, knowing there was no point trying to give them privacy. Her Iberican was utility-only, certainly not adequate to follow an emotional conversation, but they weren’t saying words anyway. The woman, still sobbing, picked her head up enough to kiss Dameron’s face all over, saying something, an endearment perhaps.

There were spectators, now, the other loaders pausing to see what the commotion was. Dameron looked up into the woman’s face and asked her a question, and she answered, and Kubira caught the word for _son_ , it was one of the ones she knew.

“His son is alive,” she said, extrapolating. This was the baby’s mother, then; a sister in such an emotional moment would perhaps kiss him like that, but not sit in his lap quite like that. These were two people whose bodies knew one another in a different way than siblings’ would; there was nothing untoward in it, but it was plain to read.

“Yes,” said one of the loaders, another Iberican, “his son is alive, the baby made it out with them, a couple of them.”

Kubira turned. “The first ship,” she said. They’d been taking on water for it, and it was about to take off. She hit her comm, hit the tower. “Hallista,” she said, which was the ship’s name. “Hallista, it’s Kubira from Docks, can I put a few more passengers on?”

“Negative,” Hallista’s dispatcher said, “we’ve sealed hatches and are reaching critical on launch, we cannot delay.”

“Acknowledged,” Kubira said. She switched frequencies and hailed the ship she was currently loading. “Iranxa,” she said, “this is Kubira, what kind of passenger capacity do you have remaining?”

“We can take several dozen more,” Iranxa’s dispatcher responded. “How many are you asking about?”

“I don’t know yet,” Kubira said. “I’ll be sending them over in about ten minutes, I’ll get you a count.”

“There’s four of them,” the comms officer said. “If you mean Dameron’s people. Five, counting him. Good thinking, Kubira. Four adults and an infant.”

“Oh, yeah, we gotta get them outta here,” Iranxa’s dispatcher said. Apparently this had been discussed on open comms already.

Somewhere in there, Dameron picked up his head and looked up at Kubira. She saw him looking at her, and smiled down at him.

“My baby’s alive,” he said, bewildered.

“Yes,” Kubira said. “I’m sending you on Iranxa. Go now.”

She saw him think about that for a quarter of a second, think of his duty, think of what he’d promised to do, and she shook her head. “Go now,” she repeated.

He nodded, and she held out her hand to help him up.

 

________________

 

Kes both looked awful and like the best thing Shara had ever seen. He was thin and drawn and exhausted and bruised, didn’t seem quite able to stand or walk properly, and it took her a few minutes of interaction to figure out that some of his distracted and confused manner was almost certainly because he didn’t seem to have slept in several days. She could smell the stimulants on him; clearly, everyone here was on them, working around the clock to prepare for the open war that had broken out. Just like every port they’d come through in varying amounts-- some stunned and silent, some in uproar, all working furiously to get ready, whether to fight or flee or protect or hide or what.

They’d left Alderaan, it turned out, about twelve hours before the Death Star had arrived, and had begun by adhering to the flight plan the Organas had sent them on to avoid suspicion-- half a dozen stops at half a dozen ports, as if they were just running errands, designed to take them toward the Rebel base without it being obvious.

And Shara didn’t know what it was that had prompted Norasol to agree with her that Poe had to come with Shara, even though by the Alderaanian doctor’s standards he was too young. Norasol had seemed reluctant to include herself, but somehow had felt compelled; Shara hadn’t attended any of the tearful arguments about it, but she knew Norasol hadn’t wanted to go but had also been the one to insist that she had to. She would have felt insulted, like perhaps Norasol thought Shara would steal Poe away from the Dameron family, but Sento had nipped her first sentiment about that in the bud. “Whatever it is,” he’d hissed to her in the hallway, having removed her from the discussion in progress so swiftly that she hadn’t had a chance to see Lita’s expression, “that’s _not_ it. Let it go.”

Sento wasn’t in the habit of speaking to anyone like that, especially not her, so she obeyed without any resistance. He had good instincts, and so did Norasol.

As for the allegedly-too-young Poe, he was a born traveler, delighted to sit in a cockpit and stare at the blinking lights of the control panel. They’d taken turns flying, Sento and Shara and the Alderaanian delivery service pilot, and so Poe had logged his first flight hours strapped to her chest and cooing delightedly until he fell asleep. Sento had been a little misty about it, and said Shara had been about this age when she’d reached this same milestone. He’d taken a holo. Shara already counted it as her favorite holo of the baby.

When they’d gotten the news about Alderaan, close to twelve hours after it happened, as they landed in their first port of call, they’d all retreated to the ship and discussed it. The Alderaanian pilot had been catatonic with shock, and the rest of the crew, all diplomats and spies, had bandied around a lot of options. But Shara’s burning desire to get to Yavin IV before her husband was reassigned somewhere else won out, and they all agreed it was the best course. They’d flown straight through to get here, forgoing the vessel change they’d been meant to do at their last stop just to avoid an Alderaanian craft flying directly to the Rebel base. There was already a rumor that Imperial troops were hunting down any large remaining enclaves of Alderaanian expats, and the ship was a big shining target for that, so they might as well make a straight run for it, right into the arms of the Rebels. The report was still that Senator Leia Organa had died in Imperial custody, so they figured anything she’d known about was compromised, including this base.

And certainly, this base knew that, from the hive of activity they’d flown into.

But the crucial thing, as far as Shara was concerned, was that Kes hadn’t been reassigned-- or, as it turned out, he had, but to here, which meant she could hold him in her arms and feel him shake as they made their halting way across the loading docks to an evacuation ship. Norasol and Sento and the contents of that Alderaanian ship-- what few possessions they’d brought with them, at least-- had already been diverted to the evacuation ship.

“You’re alive,” Kes said again, dazed. “I can’t-- you’re really here.”

“I am,” she said. “I am, baby.” She’d been frantic with worry, among other things, that Kes might do himself some violence when he heard about Alderaan, but it seemed that instead, he’d just dedicated himself entirely to the purpose of working himself to death. He was in a bad way, even his knuckles battered and skinned, and she was supporting almost all of his weight. Between her and the man who’d stepped in to take his other arm, she was pretty sure Kes wasn’t actually putting any of his weight on his feet at all.

“You know this guy’s a big hero,” said the man under his other arm.

“Who, Kes?” Shara asked. Kes reacted to his name, but didn’t seem to be following the conversation.

“Yeah,” the man said. “His Recon patrol, he went on a crazy mission and killed a bunch of Stormtroopers to save everybody else.”

“Let’s not talk about that,” Kes said, coming back to himself a little sharply.

“Whatever you say, boss,” the man said.

Shara hadn’t thought about it, but if Kes was a soldier now, that meant he’d be in a position to kill. She reached over with her free hand, the one that wasn’t holding his arm, and touched his face gently. “I’m sure you’ve done fine at whatever you’ve had to do,” she said. “Do we need to get you a medic or can we just throw you through a decontam?”

“Decontam,” Kes said, frowning.

“So you can meet your son,” she said. “I had to fight with the doctor on Alderaan to let him offworld at all, and they said everyone still has to decontam before they touch him.”

“Is he okay,” Kes said, clearly not quite following. He was so exhausted. Shara had never seen him so addled.

“He’s fine, baby,” Shara said. “He’s absolutely fine. He loved the trip here, he loves spaceships, he’s been great at traveling. He’s just still really little.”

 

They got onto the ship-- a huge, unwieldy cargo ship, about the largest a ship could be and still come down into planetary gravity, then take off again. It was enormous, but Shara could see how a ship that size would be able to take on four or five more passengers and their luggage with no real issue. The officer who met them as they embarked gushed enthusiastic things about how adorable Poe was, confirming that Sento and Norasol and their luggage were all already transferred onto the ship and were being set up in reshuffled quarters already. “And of course a baby needs a quiet place to sleep,” the officer said, “so we shuffled some things around.”

Shara thanked the officer, who sort of simpered at her. She’d encountered a few weirdly baby-mad people like that now and it was something she still wasn’t sure how to handle. Poe was cute, that was an objective fact, but people’s brains sometimes melted and that was weird. Kes was not reacting to much of anything; she wasn’t sure he’d understood what the officer had said.

Shara shuffled him straight into the decontam shower herself. He leaned on the wall and let her undress him, and she left him in there while she went to look for new clothes to put him in, dumping his into the in-unit laundry decontam. He was filthy, battered and blistered and scraped-up, and as thin as she’d ever seen him; she couldn’t believe how much weight he’d lost, and he’d never had that much extra to begin with. He looked just awful-- but, recognizably himself, which made up for a lot. She wanted to never stop touching him, but she had to let him alone so she could go get him a change of clothes.

Norasol was waiting for her in the quarters they’d been assigned, just across the corridor. “Is he all right,” she demanded, frazzled. Norasol being Not Okay had been an ongoing difficult thing to deal with, and Shara was really looking forward to pawning that issue off on Kes, but clearly he’d need some catching-up time before he could see to her.

“Yes,” Shara said, “but he’s filthy and I don’t think he’s slept in days and he’s so pumped full of uppers that I don’t know how long it’ll be before he’s coherent.”

“That doesn’t sound all right,” Norasol said.

“He’s alive,” Shara said, “and recognizable, and I’ll take it.” It came out sharper than she meant it to. Norasol eyed her, then nodded.

Shara pulled some of Kes’s clothes out of a duffel bag she’d optimistically packed for him and then lugged around half the galaxy, and pulled his wedding ring, on its chain, out of the side pocket where she’d stowed it. She had to pause for a moment and compose herself, because he’d been abducted without even socks, and now she had the pair in her hand that he’d been after in the laundry machine the last time he’d gotten out of her bed.

She went back in and found Kes still standing in the decontam stall, staring blankly while the ionizer buffeted him, even though his skin was starting to get abraded. “Hey,” she said.

He blinked at her. “Hey,” he said. He reached over and turned off the ionizer and shook himself off. How thin he was struck her again, and he was shaking badly. There were clear marks on him from autoinjectors and stim patches, as well, in among all the scrapes and bruises. She set his clothes down on the bench by the stall, and then took his face between her hands because she couldn’t keep herself from doing it, rubbing one thumb along his cheekbone.

He caught at her wrist and held on. “Shara,” he said. His eyes were so dark, a velvet-brown, and she hadn’t forgotten but to see them up close again-- his lips were chapped but the shape of his mouth was familiar, his lovely jaw, the sharp long straight line of his nose-- she blinked tears from her eyelashes and leaned up to kiss him softly.

“I was so afraid for you,” she said. “Kes, I was so afraid.”

“I about wore out that holopic you sent me,” he said. “All of them but first that vid where you asked if I’d get this. I think I memorized that one. And then the last one, where you’re looking at Poe, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve just stared at that and missed you.”

She leaned in and kissed him again. “Put some clothes on,” she said. “And then you can meet him.” She let go of his face, which was hard to do, and pulled the ring on a chain out of the pile of clothes. “Oh, and never take this off again.”

His face twisted a little as she put it over his head, and he picked the ring up to turn it over in his fingers. “I wished I had it,” he said, “but I know they’d’ve taken it. I didn’t want them to have it.”

“I know,” she said. She held out items of clothes and he pulled them on one by one, and then she kissed him again. It felt so strange to touch him, to kiss him, like he wasn’t real, like none of this was real, and she kept having to take deep breaths so she didn’t cry. “C’mon, Norasol’s dying to see you.”

Kes staggered a little, though from weariness or because of what she said she wasn’t sure, so she took his arm and walked slowly across the corridor with him. She opened the door, and Norasol was sitting in the little suite’s common room, hands twisted up in her lap. She looked up and stared at Kes, and Kes stared back at her, and neither of them moved or reacted for a moment.

Then Kes stepped in, and put his hand out, and Norasol leapt up and embraced him. “Little Bird,” she sobbed, “I didn’t-- I told her-- but I don’t think she believed me--”

“And you’re sure,” Kes said, “she stayed behind.” Of course. His mother.

“I’m absolutely certain of it,” Norasol said, and she was crying like Shara had never seen her before, sobbing like a child. She’d reacted to the news of Alderaan with bloodless frozen silence, but now she was making horrible deep sounds. Kes clutched at her and they wound up sitting on the floor together, Kes crying silently and Norasol crying loudly.

“I made a list,” Norasol managed to say, through her sobs. “I made a list of everyone I know was there. I know nobody else left.”

“Tito?” Kes asked.

“Tito,” Norasol confirmed.

Shara looked up at movement in the doorway and saw that Sento had come in to stand in the doorway. He had Poe in his arms, and the infant was asleep, curled up with his thumb in his mouth. Shara went over and held out her arms, and Sento very carefully transferred the baby to her. “I guess I don’t feel so bad for never having much of a family,” Sento said softly. “That way I never had to lose ‘em.”

Shara nodded slightly; she was crying, a little, because they were people she’d known too, and it was such an enormous tragedy to comprehend. But Poe wriggled a little in her arms, and she looked down into his little face. “Hey,” she whispered to him. “Hey, sweetheart. You finally get to meet your Papa.”

Poe wriggled again, and let out a little bleating noise, then settled himself down, and Shara turned around to where Norasol had gone quiet. Kes was holding her head against his shoulder, and looking up at Shara. He saw Poe, and sucked in his breath.

Norasol pulled away. “Go,” she said, “meet your baby, let me get myself together,” and stood up, wiping roughly at her face. Shara sat down where she’d been, and Kes stared at her and at Poe.

“Poe,” Shara said, “this is your Papa. Kes, this is Poe.” She leaned in, and Kes raised a shaky hand to touch the baby’s face. She heard the holocorder’s little whine, and glanced up to see that Sento had taken a holo, bless him. He was pretty good at it. Kes didn’t notice.

“Poe,” Kes murmured; he had tears on his face already, but fresh ones rolled down to join them. She carefully transferred the infant into his arms, and Kes took him with practiced ease-- she knew he’d already been experienced with kids, she’d seen him handle infants before, but it struck her then how natural he looked, how good and right it was.

Poe woke up and bleated a little, and Kes cradled him easily, murmuring to him, soothing him easily. “That’s my baby,” he said. “Look at you! Look at him.” He looked up at Shara, eyes shining. “He’s perfect. Look at him.”

“I know,” Shara said. She was crying, a lot. So was Kes. “You made him, baby, of course he is.”

“ _You_ made him,” Kes said, and managed a thick sort of laugh. “Look at him!”

“I have, baby,” Shara said. Poe made some little noises, but he didn’t seem as unhappy as he usually did on waking. He was looking up at Kes, and seemed fascinated.

Kes made a noise that could have been a laugh or a sob, tracing a finger down the side of Poe’s face, then putting his finger into Poe’s hand. Poe curled his hand around Kes’s finger and hung on, staring with his usual wide-eyed unfocused glare at Kes, then wriggled and squealed a little.

“Come, sit,” Shara said after a moment of the two of them staring at one another, and Kes blinked, looked around, and climbed unsteadily to his feet to move over and sit on the minimalist couch-thing the room was furnished with.

“I don’t know that he’s going to let go of that baby, ever,” Sento said, and Kes looked up.

“Maybe not,” he said, his eyes shining.

“I don’t blame you,” Sento said. He put his hand on Kes’s shoulder. “I sure am glad to see you, but you need some feeding.”

Kes laughed. “I don’t think glad comes even close to how I feel to see you guys.”

“You heard, huh,” Sento said. “We didn’t have much hope that you’d’ve missed that news.”

Kes nodded a little. “It’s. I don’t know how long ago but it was. I was pretty upset. I didn’t expect. I mean.”

“I know,” Sento said, “I know. Well, here we all are. I guess we’ve got to figure out what to do now.”

Kes had let his gaze drift back down, entranced, to the child’s face, but he looked up at that comment. “I guess you’re right,” he said.

 

_______

  


Kes woke up profoundly disoriented. He had a bad hangover, the kind that left you wrung-out-- a stimulant hangover, so there were twinges of left-over muscle cramps all up and down his legs and he badly needed to use the toilet facilities. He wasn’t really ready to be conscious but he had to relieve himself so badly that it had woken him.

He could barely move, but managed to roll over in bed. He was in a bunk in an unfamiliar ship, and couldn’t begin to figure out where he was-- but there was the marking, on the wall, for the exit and the toilet, with an arrow indicating direction, and so he staggered to his feet-- he was wearing clothes, his own clothes, familiar ones, socks even-- and managed to make his halting way out of the room-- rooms?-- and down the hallway to the refresher.

An unpleasant interlude followed but at least he didn’t have to think too hard about anything. He just existed, and was a body, and endured. Eventually, though, he woke up, realizing he’d drifted off, and the whole ordeal seemed to be more or less over, and he was alive, and now he was just sort of hollow and free and numb.

He cleaned himself up, put himself to rights, and stared at his face in the mirror over the washing sink. He needed a shave. He looked awful, the thin skin around his eyes all bruised-looking and puffy and creased. Where the fuck was he?

It was a nice dual sink, with drinking water and an ionizer. He splashed his face with water, and then used one of the recyclable cups next to the tap to drink several cups of it. His stomach didn’t protest, but he stopped before he felt like he sloshed.

It looked like he was on a freighter. A nice one, well-equipped and well-maintained. He’d traveled like this a lot, usually while working; the most cost-effective way to get to a gig was to work cargo escort on the way, and the berths were like this on the nicer runs. He was so profoundly disoriented, though, that he couldn’t remember how he’d have gotten here. There was a pressing sense in him like some large event had just occurred, but none of it felt real.

He had something around his neck. He pulled it out and looked at it. A ring on a chain.

It took him a moment to recognize it as his wedding ring. He hadn’t worn it long enough for it to be a habit. He stared at it, trying to pierce the fog to understand how he’d come by such a thing. Shara had given it to him, had put the chain over his head-- no, she’d done that at the wedding, how the hell had he gotten it back?

The only memory he could find was Shara putting it over his head but that was before, before...

The first thing that loomed up in his memory of After was Cassian Andor. Cassian Andor and that sarcastic droid, that had been real. Yavin IV, that was real, he couldn’t have come up with sunrises like that from his imagination. Pathfinder training, yeah, that had been real. And oh yes, Captain Tanak and his bad news.

That couldn’t be real but it had to be. Alderaan. Kes leaned heavier on the sink, closing his eyes. Yes, Norasol had confirmed his mother was dead, and Tito and Marita and Ori and basically everyone.

But not his son. No. Shara and Poe were here. Kes opened his eyes. Had he really met Poe? Had that actually been real? What the hell had happened to him that it was so hard for him to remember this?

He let go of the sink and staggered, nearly falling over-- his leg muscles were damaged, they’d cramped so much they were damaged. He didn’t remember how that had happened. The ring knocked against his chest, just under his collarbones. The ring. Shara had brought him his ring. Shara was alive. Shara was-- she was alive. She’d been there, she’d been with him-- she was-- here somewhere.

He made it out of the refresher and back to the hallway and stood a moment, trying to remember which door he’d come out through. They all looked the same, and he didn’t remember at all. He leaned on the wall a moment, and contemplated bursting in on strangers as he tried every door. That sounded like a good time.

He was saved when a door slid open. Shara stood there, hair wild and face puffy with sleep. “There you are,” she said hoarsely. “Shitting hell but you scared the piss out of me just now.”

She didn’t wait for an answer but crossed the hall and slid her arms around him, pressing her face into his neck. “Shara,” he said, wrapping his arms tenderly around her body.

“I woke up and you were gone and I couldn’t think where you’d vanished to,” Shara said.

“Refresher,” Kes answered. “Boring, I know.”

“Oh,” she said, “the refresher’s a good idea.”

“It was extremely necessary,” he said. He could sleep for another week. “How long was I out?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “What time is it?”

“I have no idea,” Kes said. “I don’t even know what day it is. I’m not positive of the year either.”

“Then this is a pointless conversation,” she said.

“I still love it,” Kes said, “because it’s a conversation with you and I never thought I’d have one of those again.”

She looked fondly up at him, beaming. “You sap,” she said, “trust you to save it.” She leaned up and kissed his cheek. “I love you too, kid. Now I definitely had better pee.” She let go of him and went into the refresher, and he stood swaying in the hallway, holding himself up on the wall, until she came back.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I don’t know which door I came out of,” he told her, seeing no reason to dissemble. “I staggered out here with a dire need and wasn’t paying attention.”

“How long have you been standing here?” she asked, concerned instead of mocking.

“Like I know anything about the entire concept of time,” he scoffed. “A minute or two, an hour, I don’t know. What’s more impressive is how long I spent in that refresher trying to figure out where the fuck I was.”

“We’re out in the Gordian Reaches,” Shara said. “We evacuated Yavin IV, I basically took one breath in the atmosphere of that planet, and now we’re fleeing the Death Star. I’m not sure where we’re bound, I actually think the captain of the ship is waiting to find out what happens to Yavin IV before we commit to a destination.”

“I liked Yavin IV a lot,” Kes said wistfully. It was going to get Death Starred too, and that was too enormous a thing for him to even think about. Those amazing baths-- he could happily have sat in one of those tubs and soaked and watched the Death Star come up and end the world. It was moot to consider, though; he wasn’t, now, and his family wasn’t dead. Well, most of it was, but not his wife, and not his son, and his hollowed-out exhausted brain was still trying to stretch itself around all those things.

Shara had slid her arm around his waist and was helping him walk. She led him unerringly to a door, and they went in to a little room with a table and a couch and a couple of chairs, like the common room of one of the nicer suite of berths on a freighter like this. “Nice digs,” he said.

“The quartermaster’s officer was sympathetic that we had a baby, and rearranged things to give us one of the suites,” Shara said. “I’m extremely grateful because otherwise if Poe had a bad night, nobody would get to sleep at all. This lets us pass him around and distribute the sleep problems nicely, rather than just sharing them alike.”

“Is he a bad sleeper?” Kes asked. Then, suddenly remembering that this wasn’t a holocall, “Can I see him right now? I don’t remember most of last n-- yester-- whenever that was.”

Shara gave him another one of those fond looks, this one a bit melting, like she didn’t know how to continue in the face of whatever it was that he was doing, maybe. “Of course,” she murmured, but took his face between her hands and looked so sweet he had to bend down a little and press his mouth to hers.

It was a lot to feel, and he felt like somewhere inside his hollow body most of his feelings-receptors were burned-out, but they managed to muster up a lot of intense something, he wasn’t sure what, just to have her in his arms. Everything hurt but he couldn’t entirely parse whether it was a bad hurt or a good hurt.

She led him through a door into a small room, a bedroom, with two bunks in it. He looked around and realized this was where he’d slept; he hadn’t even registered the main room but had been blindly following the small exit signs inscribed on the walls. “I think Poe is with my father,” she said. “I put him to sleep but then I figured you’d be so exhausted it’d be a shame for the baby to wake you up in the night. I don’t think he was up, though, or Papa probably would have come to get me.”

“Oh,” Kes said.

“Wait here,” Shara said, and went back into the main room. Kes went to the door to look, and saw that there were in fact four rooms off the main room, and one of them was a little half-galley with a little reheater unit for making hot beverages. This had to be one of the nicer suites on the ship. It was certainly nicer than any berth he’d had on any ship ever. It wasn’t that the accommodations were luxurious, it was that they existed at all. On a spacecraft this was an unimaginable quantity of space. And this meant that Norasol and Sento had their own rooms, which was similarly deluxe.

The ship wasn’t crowded, though. He’d known that. They hadn’t evacuated that much personnel on it; everyone who could be spared had gone on the first ship, the second ship was mostly the people who’d organized the loading and loaded the first ship, and then the rest would stay through whatever happened.

He had his first twinge of guilt, at that; he should be there, he should be helping. But Kubira had told him to go, and he couldn’t imagine anyone would seriously be angry with him for going. He couldn’t have done them much good for much longer anyway, and if he was going to live, he needed to be here.

Shara came back and had Poe in her arms and Kes instantly gave up on thinking about anything else. He took the baby into his arms; the child was sleepy, blinking and looking around but without much interest.

Kes cradled the baby in his arms and sat down on the bunk he’d slept in and gazed down at the child, transfixed. He only vaguely remembered looking at Poe yesterday, but now he was able to really pay attention and see him as a real thing, compare him to other children he’d held, assess the real weight of him, the scent of him and the unfocused, sleepy-eyed assessment he was receiving in return.

“He’s beautiful,” he said, looking up at Shara, who had sat down next to him. “I mean-- really, compared to other babies and all-- I’m not just saying that.”

Shara smiled fondly again. “I figure I’m biased, but I think so too,” she said. “You know, I was never really-- very into kids. I wasn’t against them but I never really got what all the fuss was.”

“No?” Kes said. “I’ve basically always been one of those assholes who sees a baby and wants to hold it.” It was an understatement, but Shara probably knew that, since Marita had been around to tell on him. He pushed away a pang, thinking about her: not now.

Shara shook her head. “Not me,” she said. “But. I mean. I guess now I get what the fuss is. He’s really cute.”

“He’s _really_ cute,” Kes said, and had to spend a moment really focusing on not crying with how overwhelmed he suddenly was, because Poe looked like he had in his own baby holos, and was so clearly his son, and also looked a little bit like Lita, and it was too much.

Kes had spent his entire life from the time he was old enough to really understand where babies came from being totally baby-crazy and trying like hell to keep it under wraps. It wasn’t really rational but he’d just-- always wanted a kid of his own. He’d amused the adults by taking care of Ori even though the kid was only eight years younger than him. And he’d just-- it was one of those things he’d just always daydreamed about.

Shara leaned against Kes’s shoulder, and reached over to put her finger into Poe’s hand so that Poe curled his fingers around it. He was still obviously very sleepy, and blinked slower and slower, falling back asleep. He was a handsome child, with the fine soft beginnings of a full head of curly hair, and a round sweet face, dark dark wide eyes, golden-pink skin with rosy cheeks, long dark eyelashes. He was probably still young enough to only have a reflexive smile but it would be a beautiful one once he started using it properly, that was for certain, bright-eyed and sweet-cheeked as he was.

“We made a beautiful baby,” Shara said. “Who’s really surprised?”

Kes laughed softly. “How was the birth?” he asked. “I know you said it was fine but really, how was it?”

“Oh,” she said. “Kes, it was so weird.” She shook her head slowly. “But it was fine, though.”

“No birth has ever really been _fine_ ,” Kes said.

She laughed, and slid her arm around his waist to hold him closer. “You know what I mean,” she said.

“I do actually want to know,” he said.

“Huh,” she said, and was quiet for a moment. Finally she said, “Well, I mean, going into it I was terrified, but mostly I was scared for you. When we hadn’t heard from you I was-- I figured they’d.” She stopped. “Torture you to death, Kes. I didn’t know how good my imagination was, but. It was. I thought of all kinds of horrible things they could’ve--” She stopped again.

“Shara,” he said softly. Poe had fallen asleep; his eyes had been shut a bit, but at some point he’d slowly grown heavier, and Kes knew that meant he was really asleep now.

“When we got that holo and your face was in it for like five seconds, and you still had both eyes and your lips and apparently both hands, well--” She paused, and pressed her face against his shoulder.

“They didn’t,” Kes said, “not like that, it wasn’t--”

“Not that I don’t know what they did to you,” she said, and her voice was thick. “But I was envisioning-- and to see-- that you could still talk at least-- and see, and--”

“Shh,” he said, kissing her head. “It wasn’t like that.”

“I was so scared, Kes,” she said thickly, “and so I didn’t have time to really worry about something that apparently my body was going to know how to do anyway. I just-- gave up on being scared of it and didn’t care anymore.”

“Well,” Kes said, but what else was there to say to that?

“I sent a formal message to the Imperial Senate,” she said. “It was about four days before I gave birth, and Queen Breha helped me figure out what to say, and said doing it then would be best, and so we sent a message petitioning for your release, and there I was all extremely pregnant and swollen up and crying and begging. I’m sure it’s a Rebellion recruitment tool now, I gave express permission for that.”

“Oh,” Kes said. “I figured it was safer for you not to associate with me. I figured that was why it was good our marriage certificate had never gotten filed.”

“It got filed,” Shara said. “I knew I was going to come and do this anyway. I filed it, all right.”

“Am I on Poe’s birth certificate?” Kes asked, and he hadn’t realized he cared so much.

“Of course you are,” she said. “Kes! Like I wasn’t going to acknowledge that?”

“My father wasn’t on mine,” Kes said, “and for that reason.”

“No,” Shara said, “you’re on there. Otherwise it would have been weird to give him your last name.”

Kes pulled away just enough to blink at her. “He has my last name?”

“Poe Dameron,” Shara said. “It goes better, and Norasol wouldn’t let me name him after you. It would have been bad luck.”

“No, it would have been a sign that I was dead,” Kes said. “You can’t reuse a living person’s name like that.” He looked down at the sleeping child. Poe Dameron. “He really-- you gave him my last name.”

“I did,” Shara said, and pressed her face back into his shoulder.

It wasn’t that children always took their mother’s surname, but it was common. Often when a couple married they’d keep their individual names, but sometimes, they’d both take the name of the more prominent partner. Taking Kes’s last name wasn’t something Shara had been interested in because she had such a painstakingly-assembled dossier of references in her own name; Kes had considered taking hers but his references were in his name, and if he was going to consider his mother’s diplomatic work it made sense to keep her name, and it wasn’t like Shara’s family was particularly prominent, and it didn’t seem to mean anything to her. But he’d assumed any children would have her name; it was most common for children to be given their mother’s name. They just hadn’t discussed it, because he hadn’t thought it mattered. But it was an unexpected honor, and it had an extra layer of poignance because the rest of the family was dead.

But Lita would have known, before she died. It would have meant something to her, especially if she’d still blamed herself for Kes’s capture. It would have been pretty powerful, for her. He had to sit with that a moment, thinking about his mother knowing her grandson had taken her name.

Kes kissed Shara’s head, at a loss to explain what that meant to him. Clearly, Shara knew, or she wouldn’t have done it. Had it been Lita’s idea? Probably not. “Well,” he said. “Poe Dameron.”

“It sounds good, too,” she said. “Poe Bey just didn’t ring as well. Anyway, worrying about you got me through those last few really uncomfortable days, and when I went into labor I was pretty well distracted.”

“Was it a long labor?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Overnight, and the next day,” she said, “so, I mean. It was, I mean, what it was, it sucked, and I wasn’t thrilled about it but it wasn’t as awful as I’d expected. Norasol was really good at distracting me for most of it, and there was a doctor from Alderaan who said a lot of reassuring things.”

“Did the doctor oversee the whole thing?” Kes asked.

Shara shook her head. “No,” she said. “She came by a few times, scanned me, and said, it looks like this is going well and your body knows what to do so I’ll just keep an eye on things but I’m going to stay right out of it unless something goes wrong and you need me.”

“Oh,” Kes said. “Nice.”

“She was,” Shara said. “And at the time I thought, what do you mean my body knows what to do, I don’t know how this works at all, but she was totally right. Once the whole process really got started, it was like the part of me that was thinking too hard about it just went away.”

“That’s good,” Kes said.

“I’m sure I said all kinds of crazy things,” Shara said, “but what I remember is just how-- I don’t know how to describe it, really. All my instincts and reflexes and such just kicked in. It was really hard, I know it took all the strength I had, and it hurt a lot, but I wasn’t scared, I didn’t hesitate, I just did what I had to, and I felt so powerful at the end of it, I’ve never felt that strong.”

Kes kissed her head again, but lower, on her temple, pressing his lips to her skin, smelling her hair. “You pushed a whole human into life after completely growing him inside your body,” he said. “You ought to feel strong after something like that.”

She laughed softly, melting into him a little. “Maybe,” she said. “As soon as the endorphins wore off, then I was more exhausted than I’ve ever been in my life. And then I think I cried for two or three days straight, sometime in there.”

“That’s normal, though,” Kes said. “I mean, I think it is.” He had to clear his throat before he could continue, softly, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, though.”

“I kept thinking about how happy you’d be to see him,” Shara said. “And wishing you could, and getting upset that you couldn’t.”

“Shara,” Kes said softly.

“But you’re here now,” she said. “And you get to see him now. And you’ll get to know him.”

“I will,” he said. It was a lot to take in, but this part was okay. He didn’t mind being overwhelmed with this. He looked down at his sleeping son and thought about all the things that still lay ahead, that he was going to get to be there for. “I will,” he said again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that cliffhanger was so long but I figured the plot armor was a good buffer so it wasn't so painful. I've had this done, I just haven't had time to proofread!
> 
> On a still-gory but hopefully lighter note, unrelated to this update but related to this series, there was [a phenomenal post](http://and-then-bam-cassiopeia.tumblr.com/post/166773651384/bomberqueen17-favomancer-favomancer) going around on Tumblr about eating porgs, I couldn't resist weighing in. Fantastic little mock-instructional-manual drawings, it's great. Nothing more on-brand for me ever than a how-to manual on eviscerating Space Birds, right?


	3. Wish

  


Someone was running down the halls pounding on the doors, and Norasol woke from an unexpectedly heavy sleep and came out to see what the fuss was. Shara and Sento were in the suite’s common room, Shara holding Poe, and Sento standing next to the door. “What’s the shouting?” Norasol asked.

“The Death Star,” Sento said.

“Oh,” Norasol said, feeling like maybe something was broken in her chest. It had been broken a while but it was more broken now. Yavin IV; she hadn’t looked at it much but she’d liked its energy, and Kes had given her a dried, pressed pataba leaf he’d collected there. It was a good place, and she had already been mourning it.

“No,” Sento said, “no-- they destroyed it! The Death Star! It’s been destroyed! It didn’t-- it failed!”

Norasol stared blankly. “How,” she said.

“Some-- hotshot pilot,” Sento said, “I’m not sure-- but they had the plans and there was a weak spot, and they-- we lost almost all the starfighter pilots we still had, but one got through and the thing blew up.”

“That’s,” Norasol said, “wildly impossible.”

“Yeah,” Shara said.

“But it’s true,” Sento said. “There’s sensor readings, the guy just now had a datapad with the sensor readings. It’s really just-- it’s a debris field now, like Alderaan was.” They’d seen those sensor readings too.

There were, Norasol reflected, far too many things lately that had been too incredible to believe, and she was thoroughly tired of it.

“I don’t,” she said blankly, “well-- what does that mean? What do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” Sento said.

“I don’t know,” Shara agreed, “but I know they need starfighter pilots. I know that’s gotta mean we’re gonna keep fighting, and I know that means they need me.”

Norasol nodded absently. It meant Kes would keep fighting too, she already knew that. She’d have to tell him, though. “Is Kes asleep?”

Shara nodded.

Norasol remembered, then, that Sento was a pilot too, and she looked at him. “Are you going to join too?” she asked.

“I’m thinking about it,” Sento said. “But I’m old. And I got this baby to raise.”

“Don’t leave me alone to raise this child,” she said. She hadn’t really gotten to know him all that deeply yet but she knew that she’d never raised a child on her own. Sento had. Norasol had never even lived on her own. Everything she’d ever been sure of was gone, blasted into meaninglessness. She had no idea where to start picking up the pieces.

Sento looked at her, and looked over at the baby, who was fussing a little at his mother. He looked back at Norasol. “You’re right,” he said, ‘and that’s a big part of why I was hesitating.”

“I’m not too old to fight,” Norasol said, “but I think that boy needs me more than any Rebellion does.”

Sento nodded, and he and Shara were having a discussion in their gazes, Norasol could recognize that.

“I’m going to go tell Kes the news,” she said.

Shara nodded. “You’d better,” she said. “He’s been asleep a while, he should wake up to eat anyway.”

Norasol went into the bedroom where Kes and Shara had been sleeping. He’d been awake a couple of times, but he’d clearly been having a stimulant crash and it was a lot to expect much coherence.

Kes was curled in one of the bunks, and she went and sat on the edge of it like she had when he was a child. He was a tidy sleeper, always had been; she’d shared bunks with him many times in his life. He was curled facing outward into the room, his face mushed into the pillow, breathing shallow and steady.

She’d always loved watching him sleep. It was uncomplicated, to interact with a sleeping baby, child, teenager, young man. She often was too sharp for him in waking, but in sleep she could observe him without him thinking she judged him. So she looked her fill now, brushing her fingers gently along the softness of his close-cropped hair. She’d always liked to pick out his bloodline resemblances in his features, but by now, done growing, he just looked like himself, his high cheekbones and square jaw and heavy eyelids. Now she was starting to pick out his features in Poe’s mushy little face. What a gift that child was, to have had that scrap of hope to cling to, that promise of continuity; she couldn’t stand the idea of parting from him.

But it would mean parting from Kes. She was pretty sure she still knew him, despite whatever changes he’d undergone recently. The Rebellion would let him go now, perhaps, to care for his child, but she was pretty sure he wouldn’t. He’d feel like he had to fight.

There were things now she didn’t know about him, though. He’d survived torture now, and that sort of thing introduced artifacts into the mind that it was impossible to anticipate.

He was stirring, aware of her now though not yet awake. “Kes,” she murmured, “my little bird, come back to me now.”

“Mama?” he said fuzzily, squeezing his eyes shut, and it hurt, it went right through her, what they’d lost. She traced her fingers down his cheekbone, and he blinked his eyes open. She watched him recognize her and react to not knowing where he was, and sat back to let him sit up.

“Iranxa,” she said, “fleeing the Death Star. I’ve come to tell you what happened to Yavin IV.”

He caught up, and looked bleak. “Oh,” he said.

“They blew it up,” she said. “They blew up the Death Star. It didn’t succeed; Yavin IV is untouched.”

Kes rubbed his face. “ _Who_ blew it up?”

Norasol shrugged. “Our guys, I guess. Some hotshot starfighter pilot. There’s sensor readings, Sento saw the holos. The Death Star is gone.”

“Well,” Kes said, blinking muzzily at her. “Shit. What now?”

“I don’t know,” Norasol said. “It’s rekindled Shara’s resolve to fly starfighters. I’m talking Sento into staying with Poe and me. What you want to do about it is up to you.”

Kes stared grimly at her, awake now, and let his breath out in a long sigh. “I have to fight,” he said, looking down at his hand.

“I know you do,” Norasol said. She took his hand between hers. “I stayed behind with you, and let your father go fight. I’ll do it again, because there’s no one else left.”

Kes nodded, chewing on his lower lip, then looked up. “You did good with me,” he said, mouth sliding into a soft smile. Her heart twisted.

“I didn’t do it alone,” she said.

He nodded again. “I wouldn’t ask you to,” he said.

“Good,” she said.

He gazed at her for a moment, then twitched the corner of his mouth up, this smile more mischievous. “Not at your age,” he said.

She pretended to hit him. “Insolent youth,” she said.

He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Poe’s 50% Bey,” he said. “I got a feeling they’re troublemakers. You’ll need the help.”

“Tell that to Sento,” she said.

“I will,” Kes said.

“Use those words, too, I dare you,” she said.

Kes laughed. “You don’t really think my mother never taught me diplomacy?”

What they’d lost stabbed her again, and she frowned at him, her words gone. He understood, and put his arms around her this time. “She did, Auntie,” he said. “They’ve taken her from us now but they can’t take away what she gave us.”

There was nothing to do for that but cry, so Norasol did, and Kes held onto her. When she’d cried herself out, he said, “She made me, Auntie. It doesn’t matter what they did to her, I still have that.”

  


______

  


For Shara, the next couple of days passed in exhausting, nerve-wracking peace and recovery. Kes was alarmingly inconsistent. Much of the time, he was recognizably his old self but with a slightly harder edge-- he’d always been quiet and had a tendency to wait and see how a conversation was going before he weighed in, but now he surveyed interactions with an intensely keen attention, and if he commented, it was incisive. Except for the times when he wasn’t himself, and seemed to be withdrawn behind a shell, enduring the passage of time without noting it. In company it was hard sometimes to gauge him; he would seem detached and inattentive, but if spoken to would have an apt rejoinder.

Shara didn’t have a great deal of opportunity to interact with him in private, to be able to command his attention and know for certain whether he were himself or not. They were rarely alone, and most of those times, the baby was with them.

At least he was himself with the baby, or so she thought, though it was hard to be sure. He was entranced by the baby, who was entranced by him in return. Poe started smiling at him, and it took a few times of it happening before Shara realized it was deliberate, those were real smiles. Up until then, Poe’s smiles had been charming but largely random, after the manner of very young infants; just a thing his face did, rather than an expression he deliberately made. But his reaction to Kes was plainly delight.

He’d smiled at the cockpit lights a couple of times when Shara had flown with him, too, and she’d wondered if that was real but hadn’t said anything. Now she was sure it had been-- but she was going to stick to the story that his first smiles were for Kes, because it suited the family narrative better.

It took two days before she actually found herself really alone with Kes. Poe had gone to bed with Norasol, who was better since Kes’s return but had taken to sleeping a lot. It was just as well; she’d gone days at a time without sleeping ever since Kes had been taken, and Shara hadn’t ever had the mental energy to really keep track of her but knew she hadn’t been okay. Having Kes back would help, and that was as much as Shara could spare for her.

(She understood, though. Norasol had lived through a lot of crises and had gotten a reputation for being the one who knew what to do, but she’d lived through those crises with Lita. With Lita first unreliable and then gone, Norasol was under a lot of pressure in a direction she’d never withstood it before, and yet was still expected-- at least by herself-- to be the one who knew what to do. That was a lot for anyone to handle, and with the grief and uncertainty, it was a wonder the woman could function at all. But there’d been no time to talk about it, and it was the sort of thing that might not withstand being addressed head-on anyway.)

She’d been out, listening to the latest briefings on the ongoing war at large. The Iranxa was bound for a planet called Harasta, one of several sites where the Rebellion was covertly regrouping. There would undoubtedly be a flood of new recruits, but those would be directed to first-level clearinghouse sort of sites, to be screened for obvious spies and the like. Harasta would be a higher-level site, for people who’d already been screened-- like the Iranxa, which was full of people who’d been in on the Rebellion’s secrets enough to know about Yavin IV.

Yavin IV would have to be abandoned, of course. Kes seemed sad about that, and Shara couldn’t really pry much out of him about what was so great about the planet he’d been more or less exiled to, but then, it was hard to have coherent conversations about much of anything.

On Harasta, Shara would go through her own intake screening; they had a full suite of simulators there, she was told, and they’d be able to verify her skill level. “Although,” the personnel officer had said, glancing through the contents of the data chip she had given him of her references, “you’ll probably have an easy time of it.”

“My simulator results are already on that chip,” Shara said.

“I see that,” the officer said, and her eyebrows went up as she skimmed through them. “Yes, I imagine you’ll have an easy time of it.”

Shara stole as much food as she could easily, casually pocket from the ship’s mess-- it wasn’t forbidden, but it wasn’t encouraged either-- and went back to the suite. Kes was so underweight, she was following Norasol’s lead and making him eat whenever he was awake, though it was starting to annoy him. She figured that was a good sign.

He was in the bedroom, and she let herself in quietly after stashing the food, expecting him to be asleep. But he was sitting up, looking through something on the little datapad/holoviewer gizmo he had. He looked up, and turned the thing off before she could really tell what he’d been looking at-- a holo, possibly of her and Poe, but maybe not-- and smiled at her.

“Hey,” she said in delight, leaning against the door after it finished sliding shut behind her.

His smile went almost shy. “Hey,” he said. He was sitting in the corner of the bunk, leaning on the wall, curled up, and he looked young and small but besides that, more like his old self, just a little bit coy and shy. It took Shara a moment to recognize the feeling curling through her belly as desire, of all things; she hadn’t time or inclination for that sort of nonsense in a long while now.

She couldn’t remember how flirting even worked anymore. She laughed at herself, and said, “Is this you living your best life?” because it was the last pickup line she’d ever used.

He blinked at her, and she watched recognition wash across his face, amused and melancholy all at once. This wasn’t anything like the life either of them had planned, to be sure. But then his smile came back, and he grinned wider and said, “It is now.”

She laughed, delighted, and went over to sit on the bed. He uncurled to meet her, and she stood at the edge of the bed and let him put his arms around her. Like this, she was just a little taller than him, so she could look down into his face. She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him.

He’d brushed his teeth recently, and tasted pleasant. He returned the kiss with interest, hands going to her waist, and she pressed herself against him. She hadn’t really thought about sex since before the baby; it had retreated into a kind of an abstract concept. But here he was, her husband, and parts of her body really remembered his scent and his body and wanted to make his reacquaintance.

“Hey,” she said softly. “We’re married.”

“I promised you all kinds of stuff,” he said, looking up at her-- by the Mother, he was so pretty, with his soft mouth and his big velvet-dark eyes, and he was looking pained and sad.

“I don’t think I can blame you for the Empire,” she said, curling her fingers around the back of his neck, enjoying the warmth of his skin and the softness of his hair. “You wanna make a new plan together?”

His mouth curved a little, warming up from the momentary melancholy. “Yeah,” he said.

“We’ll figure it out,” Shara said. “I know we can figure it out.”

He tilted his face up to her so she kissed him again. She got really into it this time, her heart rate and breathing picking up until she finally had to release his mouth to catch her breath. It took him a moment to open his eyes, and he blinked slowly at her, a crease forming between his eyebrows.

“I missed you,” she whispered, moved nearly to tears.

He was still staring at her, eyes a little unfocused. Finally she asked him, “What is it?” when he didn’t move or react to her.

His eyes flickered downward, then back up, and he said, finally, barely on a breath, squinting as if he were reluctant to speak, “Is this real?”

“What?” Was he kidding?

No, Shara realized, he was sincere. She cradled his jaw in her hand. “Yes, Kes, it’s real, I’m really here.”

He’d gone tense, she realized; he hadn’t moved, but he was tense now, braced as if expecting a blow. She remembered, then, that he had been interrogated; remembered that he’d been tortured. He hadn’t told her much about it but he’d explained, elliptically, that some of the interrogation techniques had involved hallucinations. He’d said, indirectly, that sometimes he had trouble knowing what was real and what wasn’t.

No, he wasn’t kidding.

“Did they make you hallucinate this?” she asked, holding his face in both hands.

He blinked, a flinch, almost like he’d expected her to hit him. “They,” he said. “It wasn’t-- they can’t make you see anything in particular, they just-- stimulate your various nerve centers and play along with whatever your brain fills in, but-- yeah-- I mean, a lot of the time--” He hesitated, like he was too distraught to continue. Like he was afraid of her.

“A lot of the time it was me,” she filled in.

His eyes flickered to the side, then back to her, then down. “Yeah,” he said, guarded now, wary-- waiting for her to get angry or hurt him or-- something along those lines, it was painfully apparent.

“How can I prove it’s really me?” she asked, and tears were pricking the backs of her eyelids but that wasn’t helpful. She breathed deep and pushed them away. _They tortured my husband with my face_ , she thought, and pushed that away too.

He closed his mouth, watching her warily without quite making eye contact, expressionless, and the worst part was that she could tell he was increasingly terrified and trying desperately not to let on, the longer she went without reacting with the violence he expected. “I, um,” he said, squinting again-- like he expected to get hit and was trying to protect his eyes.

 _Don’t cry_ , Shara thought ruthlessly at herself; the tension was mounting as he waited. “Should I do something that’s-- that I’d never do?” she asked. “Or will that only make it seem more like I’m not me?” He looked conflicted about that. She considered and rejected several possibilities-- slap him? No, surely they’d hurt him, if she acted like one of his interrogators that would only make it worse. Cry? Well, it was tempting, but she couldn’t see how it’d be useful. “I could tell you things only we’d know but that won’t work, if you know it you already know it, and if you don’t know it then I could be making it up.”

He looked uncertain. “I,” he said, and a tremor went through his arms where they were still around her body.

“Can I talk about Poe?” she asked, seizing on the idea. “He wasn’t born yet, when they had you, was he?”

“You named him Poe,” he said, very quietly but with great intensity. “There was a holo-- I used to look at that holo-- and that was how I-- I remembered--” He was stammering now, and shaking, and she pulled his head against her breast, combing her fingers through his hair.

“That’s right,” she said softly. “I sent you a holo about it. I named him Poe. He smiles at you now, do you remember? That’s real, Kes. That’s real.”

“This is real,” he said louder, losing control of his voice, his body shaking hard, pressing his face into her chest.  “This is-- real.”

“It’s real, baby,” she said. “I’m real. You’re safe here, you’re with me, for real. Our baby’s in the next room with Norasol.”

“You’re real,” he said, and tightened his arms around her, squeezing her midsection. The motion let out some of the tension, finally, like he wasn’t waiting for her to explode anymore. She let out a watery laugh of relief and rubbed the back of his neck, petted his hair, and craned her neck to try to look at his face.

“I am, baby,” she said. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Are you with me now?”

“Yeah,” he said unsteadily. “I-- yeah.” He looked up at her. “You named him Poe _Dameron_.”

She almost cried then-- she could have drowned in his wide dark determined eyes-- but managed to squeeze it back. “I did, baby,” she said, and pulled his face into her breasts. She’d figured on it as a peacekeeping gesture for Lita, and hadn’t figured Kes would care, but-- well, maybe it was because all the other Damerons were dead, she wasn’t sure, but it had moved him plenty, so she was glad her impulse had worked out this well. Let his son have his name; neither she nor Papa was that interested in the Bey name, and didn’t need it to persist.

He didn’t seem to want to let go, so she gave up on trying to see his face and just petted his hair soothingly, rubbing her other hand across the backs of his shoulders. She could see now that there were little scars on the back of his neck, dark spots where needles had gone in maybe, and his wrists had faint silver lines of scarring, more visible as texture than color, maybe shackle marks. She wanted to cry, but she’d fought it off this long, so she kept it bottled up and didn’t. “It’s okay, baby,” she murmured over and over while he clung to her shakily.

It was a while before he let go and sat up. “I’m sorry,” he said miserably. His face was a little puffy, and there were creases in the skin of his cheek where he’d had himself mashed against the front of her shirt. He hadn’t been crying, but he almost looked like he had.

“Don’t be _sorry_ ,” she said. “Don’t you apologize for what they did to you.” She cupped his cheek gently, and bent to kiss the creases in his skin, a soft brush of lips over his cheek. She stayed bent, and pressed her forehead against his.

“But I want,” he said, “I want to-- be okay, and-- with you--”

She rolled her head back and forth, shaking it “no” without pulling away from him, and then stood up. “You’ll be as okay as you gotta be,” she said. “I just want to be with you too. Can I get in that bed with you and snuggle you properly?”

He looked up at her, tousled and sad and sweet, and moved over. She decided to go for comfort, and shed her shoes, trousers, and overshirt, then climbed into the bed, pulled up the blankets, and settled herself next to him, pulling his face back into her shoulder. He wriggled until he was comfortably enough arranged with his head on her shoulder and breast, his arm around her waist. It was a small bunk, but they fit well enough; they’d managed smaller, in various places and times.

“It’s not that I didn’t like the kissing,” he said. “I like the kissing a lot.”

“We can do the kissing,” Shara said, “but I want to figure out how to do the kissing without making you go back there in your head.”

He didn’t have an answer for that, but seemed to be thinking it over. She rubbed her hand up and down his back, feeling the line of his spine, wondering if he had any other new scars she didn’t know about yet. She hadn’t looked him over that carefully, and wasn’t sure she wanted to.

Well, she wanted to, but she didn’t want to find anything, was the issue with that. She wasn’t going to ask him. She had enough to do now, to find the scars that weren’t visible. Thinking about what they must have made him see was unnerving; especially the thought that his hallucinations had apparently been of being intimate with her felt like a profound violation. They’d polluted his memories, all the places he would go for comfort. It was horrifying.

“In the,” she said delicately, “uh, the… hallucinations… was I still pregnant, or no?”

He moved his head, making kind of an equivocating gesture with it without breaking contact with her body. “It wasn’t that detailed mostly,” he said. “I mean-- you weren’t like, a whole _you_. So I think if I just… really pay attention, then I can-- it’s just that if I stop paying attention, and let my mind drift at all, then I lose track, and then I panic.”

“Does it happen… other times?” she asked, but she knew already. “It does, doesn’t it.”

“It happens a lot,” he said, with an air like he was admitting something. “The medic said… well, she said nobody usually recovers like I have, so I’m kind of. On uncharted ground. But she was pretty sure it would keep getting better.” He rolled his face to peer up at her with one eye. “Based on no information, of course; she was just being hopeful to be nice to me.”

Shara closed her eyes. She’d thought-- well, she’d thought they were telling the truth and he was fine. It stood to reason that was too good to be true.   
“What,” she said, then paused. “Do I want to know what happened to the others?”

“Mostly,” he said, “they never figured out what was real again, and died like that, pretty quickly. So I’m, um. Setting a record every moment I’m lucid.”

“Baby,” she said, pained, holding him tighter. She couldn’t keep the tears back then, but tried to at least keep them out of her voice.

“Mostly,” he said, “I can remember by brute force that Poe is alive and now, that I’ve met him, I can remember that. It’s getting easier. I’m not worried about it, I’m just tired of it.”

“Okay,” she said, because saying any more would probably mean letting on that she was crying. Her nose was running and she surreptitiously wiped it on the back of her hand without making any noise. Of course Kes was the bravest miracle boy ever. He was a delicate flower and an improbable work of art and a blade of durasteel, all in one. She pressed her cheek down against the top of his head. “If you’re not worried I’m not worried,” she said, and it came out as a whisper so her voice didn’t crack.

“I’m getting better,” he said, determined. “I’m-- getting better.”

“You must be doing okay,” she said, after a hard swallow cleared her throat. It came out thick, but not cracking, at least. “You’ve been on missions and stuff, you haven’t been--” _locked up in medbay under observation--_ “sitting around.”

“I have,” he said. “I’m. I’ve done fine. I can snap myself out of it if I forget where I am. I got-- I got a commendation, and they selected me for Spec Forces.”

“I know they did,” she said, whispering again. She didn’t mean to, but what she’d been wondering about since that man had mentioned dead Stormtroopers in the midst of their frantic reunion and escape from Yavin IV came out: “Did you-- kill anybody?”

There was a moment of quiet. “Yes,” he said. “Stormtroopers. Long story.”

She thought about that. She was going to be called upon to kill, too. In the simulations of combat-capable starcraft, they always included dogfighting moves and strafing or bombing runs, and taught control of the guns for all the ships that were single-seat. She knew she was an excellent shot, but it had always been theoretical, had always been holographs. “Is it... hard to do?” she asked, thinking both about having to do it herself, and about her sweet beautiful husband, already so battered, taking this new trauma upon himself.

He was silent for a moment. “No,” he said, “but it’s-- it’s hard that it’s not hard, if that makes sense.”

“That makes sense,” she said. “Probably different to do it from a starfighter but I bet it’s even easier, and worse for that.”

He lifted his head a little and looked at her; he’d realized why she was asking. “Yeah,” he said, “I bet it is.” There was a crease between his eyebrows; he looked pained and sympathetic.

“I don’t want to kill people,” she said, ‘but-- they blew up Alderaan, it’s not hard to see that it’s necessary to fight back. I just don’t-- like the idea of doing it myself. I suspect I’ll get over it quick but I don’t know how I’ll feel about myself once I do.”

He gave her a soft half-smile. “My experiences were a bit more… hands-on,” he said, ‘but you’re right, it’s not hard to do, and that’s terrifying in its own way.” He leaned in and kissed her neck, running his hand up her side, pulling her in tighter to embrace her. She tipped her head back, giving him better access, surprised at how fast she melted back into desire.

“Maybe we can get each other through it,” she said, suddenly out of breath. His mouth was hot and teasing on her neck, and she could tell he meant it that way from how the rest of his body was moving.

“Can we get back to the kissing?” he asked.

“Please,” she answered, and turned her head.

This time she paid closer attention, and if Kes ever paused, she would squeeze his shoulder or take his jaw in her hand or poke him in the ribs to make him look at her, and she’d smile at him, and each time he smiled back, or at least acknowledged the reminder to stay present and not drift off.

She took her shirt off, and he admired her breasts extensively. They were different-- changed since before pregnancy, for sure, but now changed since birth. She was still lactating, though she’d never fed Poe exclusively with breastmilk and now was mostly only feeding him just for a few minutes twice or three times a day, more for closeness than nourishment-- the doctor had told her that spacers usually carried too much residual radiation with them for it to be a good idea to rely entirely on their breast milk, and she’d taken it seriously. She’d never really produced enough anyway.

She had been warned, but hadn’t really experienced yet, that arousal could make her milk let down. It was now, and Kes was weirdly awed by it. She wasn’t leaking a lot, but she was leaking some, and it seemed to be blowing his mind.

But, in a good way; he knew it was real, certainly knew he wouldn’t hallucinate this, and she laughed and let him taste it, wonderingly, and endured him being so distracted he just kissed her all over the chest for a while. She didn’t have to warn him that he shouldn’t pinch or squeeze her breasts, he seemed to get it.

“I haven’t… really been paying attention at how any… anything else has changed,” she admitted, after a little of this when Kes started to show interest in the rest of her. She wasn’t quite wearing the same size trousers as she had before, and things had… changed shape somewhat, she felt like maybe she was a little lumpier. Her skin had been taking its sweet time at returning to its original shape, and might never. There were marks in the skin of her belly that hadn’t been there before, where it had stretched to make room for Poe as he grew. Kes admired those too, gratifyingly; she hadn’t decided yet if they were ugly, though she knew there were cosmetic procedures for removing them.

“No,” Kes said, “those are like, a badge of honor,” and he seemed to mean it. “It’s a big deal to have a baby, and you did, and you’ve got the marks on your body, why would you erase them?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “people do.”

“People are stupid,” he said, and kissed her belly.

She laughed. “That’s true,” she said. “Hey, take your clothes off, it’s not fair that I’m almost naked here and you’re not.”

He laughed too, sat up, and stripped down to his underwear obediently. She had seen him, she knew, but it was different to consider in this light. He looked so good, was the thing, with the light dim enough not to notice the various bruises and scrapes and hypo marks and such-- he was too skinny but he wasn’t that much smaller, he looked like himself, and she wanted him.

He was only about half-hard, though, which, really, she hadn’t seen him at less than full attention very often, especially not after making out for so long. And it wasn’t like he wasn’t interested; he clearly was. But it seemed like maybe he’d need a little longer to get going than usual, too, just like she was certainly going to. She didn’t really care, she just wanted to touch him. Maybe nothing would ever be like it was, but as long as she had _something_ , she could be happy with that.

He rolled onto his back, pulling her up to lie on him. She pulled the blankets up over them, because it was always cold on spaceships and it was no different in this little room. His arms felt so good around her, as strong as they ever had, and she framed his face between her hands and gazed down at him.

“Your skin feels really good on my skin,” he said, a little wondering like it had taken him by surprise.

“It does,” she said. She wriggled a bit, aligning the parts of them that were still in underpants with one another. He was getting there, and twitched a little as she ground herself down against him.

“I sort of wondered if that part still worked,” he admitted, his voice soft in her ear. “It-- I didn’t really, I haven’t--”

She kissed his neck. “It’s all right, baby,” she murmured. “I don’t need anything in particular. We can take it easy.”

He laughed, sounding relieved. “I don’t know-- if I can do you any kind of justice.”

“Let’s not get too ambitious,” she said. “I haven’t tried anything yet either, I don’t know how well I’m doing really. I just want-- to touch you.”

“Okay,” he said, and rubbed himself against her like they were a couple of fumbling kids just figuring out how this worked. Well, Shara thought, it was an apt description of their state.

She got very flustered and turned-on and out of breath, and it felt amazing, she hadn’t felt like that in so long, and he was there and he was staying present, his breath catching in reaction to hers, his mouth curving at her amusement. He gained coordination as she lost it, and held onto her hips, pulling her up to rub her against him just so. But he also went shivery before she did, and after a little while he gasped and jerked against her. She caught him around the back of the neck and pressed down against him, murmuring encouragement, and he shivered, jaw rasping against her cheek as he shook, panting.

He made a bewildered little noise as he subsided, and she kissed him sweetly, easing up the pressure. She was worked-up, but she could deal with it, bottle it up and save it for later. She rolled off him, shoving him over so she could lie next to him, and he curled into her, shaking.

“Shara,” he said, and put his hand down between them, rubbing at her through her underwear. She shivered, and tilted one knee up to rest it on his leg so he had room.

“Yeah,” she said, and he pulled his hand away, put it to the waistband of her underpants. “Okay,” she said, and he put his hand down in her underwear, sliding against her, and his fingers found their target. He hummed in satisfaction and pulled her tighter against himself, sliding his fingers in and exploring a little. “Oh!” she said, which was more noise than she’d meant to make.

“Not so different,” he said, and kissed her, and in a matter of moments brought her off, shivering and clenching on his fingers.

“I love you,” she said, and she’d never been this high on orgasm endorphins before, it was like the room was spinning. “Oh, Kes--”

He pulled her tight against himself, shoved his face into the crook of her neck, and fell asleep pretty much instantly. She hadn’t meant to, but she followed him under right away.

 

_______

 

At least, Norasol thought to herself, one thing was going right in the world. Poe had suffered a cranky night and kept her up, but she’d had a hunch that she ought not to disturb the infant’s parents, so she’d toughed it out; Shara couldn’t often get him to sleep any more readily than anyone else, and waking her to try just meant nobody got any sleep. So, sure enough, this morning, as Norasol worked her way through an uncharacteristic but necessary cup of caf while Sento fed the unreasonably-sunshiny baby, she watched Kes and Shara gaze moonily at one another with the unmistakable glow of two people who’d just had really good sex.

It was no small achievement, given all that had happened, and Norasol couldn’t muster any bitterness about it. It stabbed her painfully to think that it was something she’d never have again, herself-- she knew already, she’d never move on from Lita, and that was just going to be a gaping hole at her center that she still hadn’t found the depths of-- but she couldn’t be jealous.

She made a sour face at the bitter drink in her cup, which amused Sento, then caught his eye and raised an eyebrow, nodding her head at the lovestruck couple just as Shara trailed her fingers along the back of Kes’s neck, and Kes gazed up at her with wide shiny eyes, an awed half-smile curving his slightly-open mouth.

Sento snorted quietly, hiding a grin, and she rolled her eyes and smiled. Sento leaned over to her. “As long as they don’t make another baby yet.”

“Stars,” Norasol said, barely managing not to spit out her caf.

“What?” Shara asked, but she was too languid and soft-edged to put any real suspicion into it.

“Nothing,” Sento said.

“Are you laughing at me?” Shara asked, sounding only mildly curious.

“No, sweetie,” Sento said. “I’m just glad you look so happy.”

“I’m taking what happiness I can find,” she said, soft and wistful, pulling herself closer to Kes. Kes blinked and gave Norasol a more self-aware look, similarly wistful.

“We’re all glad for it,” Sento said. “Just--”

Shara laughed. “I’ve checked with the med droid,” she said. “I’m not ovulating yet. I’m on top of it, this time.”

“Good,” Sento said. “We’re delighted, but this is all the delight we can take for the immediate future.”

Kes caught on, and made a face that turned into a reluctant laugh. It quite restored Norasol’s sense of humor, and she stood up. “I’m going to go to the mess and get breakfast, who’ll come help me carry it back?”

Kes looked around, shrugged, and nodded. “I’ll go,” he said. He’d been up and about for a couple of days now, but hadn’t made it as far as the mess deck yet, so this was progress. It was good that he was feeling up to it.

 

Kes knew people, Norasol realized-- many of the people nodded to him as they passed, even though he was in civilian clothes. One person stopped him just inside the mess hall door, putting a hand on his arm and asking earnestly after his family. He answered almost shyly, introducing Norasol, mentioning the baby, and the other person was gratifyingly touched to hear about it, solicitous and kind. Kes had friends, which wasn’t something Norasol ought to have been surprised by.

He’d always been a little shy, a little reserved, but very likable. She’d worried he was too shy, as a child, that he’d struggle with fitting into social groups, but from the time he’d been old enough to go out and work he’d done fine. He was surely Lita’s son; despite rarely being the one to strike up conversations, Lita always had been quick to make connections in new social groups, somehow. It had to have been her own personal magnetism, her keen ability to observe others.

It hurt, a little, to think about it like that, but it hurt in kind of an endurable way.

They went and assessed the food offerings, but Kes paused, looking over into the sitting area. There was a woman there, identifiably holding court; from her hairstyle and dress, Norasol figured she was from one of the Midrim Clans. Good people to know. “That’s Kubira,” Kes said. “She was kind to me, and offered protection. I owe her a debt.”

Norasol raised her eyebrows. “When was this?” she asked.

Kes gave her a wry look. ‘When I thought all of you were dead,” he said. “I was briefly rude to her.”

“You’d better apologize for that,” Norasol said, horrified.

“Oh,” he said, “believe me, I did. But I’m going to apologize again.” He moved toward the woman, and Norasol fell in with him. Even under the auspices of the Rebellion, they’d need protectors and allies.

Norasol vaguely recognized the woman, as they came closer. A tremendously tall, well-built woman, with gems like stars braided into her hair, both regal and workmanlike, and only a few years older than Norasol herself was-- she remembered the woman’s mother, equally imposing, being the head of some clan or other, and giving Lita safe passage somewhere or other.

The woman recognized Kes, acknowledging him with a nod before returning her attention to the person who was currently speaking to her. Kes tucked his chin down and folded his hands at his waist in an attitude of respectful patience to wait until she was finished with her business, and Norasol planted herself next to him in a slightly less-deferential pose.

She thought better of it almost immediately-- she had no people now, she represented no one-- but it was too late, now it would just look like fidgeting. So she stood with her head up and her shoulders squared, the way she would have for Queen Breha.

It was only a moment before the woman thanked the person speaking for their consideration, and then looked at Kes. “I have been wanting to hear how you fared,” she said, and rose stiffly from her seat to come forward and embrace Kes.

“Elder Kubira,” he said, and that was it, that was the woman’s name, her mother had been Allanta. “I have fared well, but it looks like perhaps you have paid a price for that hard work.”

“I am not as young as I was,” she said ruefully, “but it looks like you have recovered well.”

“I have,” Kes said, “in the arms of my family. My son is alive, and my wife and her father, and my aunt.” And he gestured to Norasol. “This is Norasol Yauta, my esteemed aunt and now the only surviving elder of my people.”

“I knew your mother,” Norasol said, then had to add, honestly, “though not well.”

Kubira stepped back and considered her solemnly. “Oh,” she said, “yes, Lita Dameron,” and she looked at Kes, then back. “I remember. She was on Alderaan?”

“Yes,” Norasol said, setting her jaw.

“I am so sorry to hear it,” Kubira said, and took Norasol by the hands. “I am so sorry.”

Norasol didn’t have any words for that, so she just nodded. Kubira had a kind of power to her, a soft glow, it wasn’t warmth exactly but it was, maybe, pressure. It was deeply reassuring.

“But her grandson is alive,” Norasol said, and Kubira’s expression shifted to one of delight.

“Oh yes,” she said. “So, now I have to ask the question you had to know was coming, which was, how is your baby, and can I meet him?” This last was addressed to Kes in equal measure.

Kes looked very endearingly shyly pleased and proud, not quite smiling but lit up from the inside. “He is very well,” he said, “and I would love to introduce him to you. But he’s only seven weeks old and can’t really handle crowds very well. Would you do the honor of coming to my family’s quarters?” He glanced at Norasol, who had a moment to be horrified before remembering that, well, they were on a spaceship, nobody’s quarters were likely to be very nice. They’d just have to tidy up a little bit, but Sento as a lifelong spacer had a pretty ingrained habit of putting things away, so it was pretty neat.

“I would love to,” Kubira said. “When?”

“Any time that pleases you,” Kes said, but he glanced at Norasol. She nodded.

Kubira looked from one of them to the other, and raised an eyebrow in amusement. “I think you underestimate how much I love babies,” she said. “I’ll come immediately, if you don’t stop being so polite.”

Norasol laughed. “Well,” she said. “We came to fetch breakfast for the others, so they’ll be mad if we don’t bring it.”

“I can help with that,” Kubira said.

  


_____

  


Shara hummed a little to herself as she fixed her hair in the mirror, then caught her father’s expression over her shoulder and laughed. “Papa,” she said.

“You’re worse than you were as a newlywed,” Sento said. He had just fed Poe an entire bottle, with much commentary on how much the infant was eating, and was currently holding Poe to burp him.

“I wasn’t bad as a newlywed at all,” Shara said. “You got off easy there, Pa.” She tugged at the little curl that always made its way loose by her face, trying to get it to lay properly, then gave up and turned around. “Anyway I think it’s a bigger deal to get a man back from near-certain death than to marry one.”

“That’s a good point,” Sento said, and Poe burped wetly. Sento’s expression changed. “Oh no.”

“Oh no,” Shara echoed, realizing that Poe was in the process of emptying the entire contents of his newly-filled stomach down Sento’s back. She grabbed up a burp cloth and threw it at him before dashing into the bedroom to get another one.

She came back just as the outer door opened. “ _Kes_ ,” she said, harried, “your son is a _puke machine_ ,” and bent to help her father mop himself off. Kes, obnoxiously, began to laugh, and Shara sighed, resurfaced, and gave him a rude gesture with one hand.

Only to find herself looking at a small crowd of people, including not just Kes and Norasol but a very tall, regal woman she vaguely recognized as having been near Kes when she’d been reunited with him, and two other people she’d never seen before.

“Oh,” Shara said. “Hi. Excuse me.”

“It _was_ a really impressive amount of puke,” Sento said agreeably. “Hello, Kubira, how lovely to see you! Kes mentioned you but I hadn’t realized you were on this ship.”

“Oh, why it’s Sento Bey, hello,” the tall woman said, and Shara remembered her now, she was some friend of Titaba’s. Someone vaguely important but still somewhat accessible. Someone not to make rude hand gestures at. “And little Shara,” the woman went on. “I remember you looking much differently than you do now, dear.”

“Kubira,” Shara said. “Oh, my stars, you were right there with Kes, weren’t you, and I totally ignored you.”

“I think it’s forgivable,” Kubira said. “But if you want to make it up to me you could let me hold your baby, now that he’s just emptied himself of at least one category of dangerous substances.”

Poe was bleating unhappily, which was understandable. Shara took him from Sento, who went to change his shirt, and held him a moment, staring brief daggers at Kes. He could have knocked or something. “I will absolutely let you hold my baby,” Shara said, wiping Poe’s face gently. “Once I’m sure he’s not covered in his own spit-up. Shh, baby, shh, it’s okay, let me see that chin.”

Kubira came farther into the room, and Norasol found her a chair that didn’t have any vomit on it, and made sure the couch was clean enough for her entourage to sit on. “I meant to run ahead and let you know we were coming,” Kes said, coming to stand next to Shara, “but I didn’t want to just vanish.”

“Great timing though,” Shara said. “I had just thought to myself, that’s a lot more than he usually drinks at once, wow, and then he blew up.”

“That’s how it goes, isn’t it?” Kes said, beaming so happily down at Poe that she couldn’t really be mad at him. Fatherhood suited him, as she’d suspected it would.

She rolled her eyes at him fondly, then went over to Kubira. Poe had settled considerably-- she rather suspected it was hearing his father’s voice that had calmed him, disgustingly enough-- and so managed to do himself some credit as the adorable infant he was, blinking with wide-eyed curiosity up at Kubira.

“Stars, he’s precious,” Kubira said, settling him knowledgeably in her arms. Everyone but her was practiced at holding babies, Shara thought, though she’d picked it up pretty well on the fly these last couple of months. Unfair, given that she’d done more work _making_ this infant than anyone else, but she was catching up.

She shouldn’t be surprised; she had never really interacted with children before. She suspected she’d have a similar learning curve with all of it, ahead.

“I’m pretty pleased with how he turned out,” Shara said, since she figured she had to say something. “I just wish he knew how to either sleep or eat. I’d take one or the other, but I didn’t realize they were both so complicated.”

“He’s probably about to be really hungry again,” Kubira agreed. “Because he was hungry, so he ate too fast, so he threw up, so he’s still hungry. Poor little jumpa-nut.”

Poe fussed, wriggling, but caught sight of Kubira’s face again and stopped, fascinated. Her complexion was very striking, very dark, and Poe’s vision was good enough by now that he would notice that, Shara supposed. (She’d been reading a lot of holobooks about early childhood development. They both did and did not explain a lot.) Kubira smiled at him, and he stared a moment, then smiled back. Everyone in the room cooed simultaneously, and Shara caught Kes’s eye and grinned at him.

Kubira’s companions introduced themselves; they were a nephew and a cousin of hers, respectively, though Shara caught that the nephew wasn’t really related by blood. Everyone made pleasant conversation over the breakfast they’d brought, Shara filled in precisely where she knew Kubira from-- some gig she’d followed her dad on when she was about twelve-- and got some insight into the kind of clout Lita Dameron had formerly had, in the wider social circles of the galactic trade networks.

“Now,” Kubira said, looking up from Poe, who was happily taking a bottle from her. “I hear that you’re planning to sign up as a pilot, Shara, with the Rebellion. Are you as well, Sento?”

Sento shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “I’m torn, but the sensible side of me says I’d better stick with this kid. Me and Norasol. I got a feeling it’s gonna take both of us to keep him under wraps.”

Kubira nodded, contemplating Norasol for a moment before looking back down at Poe. “Have you made your arrangements yet?” she asked.

Sento raised his eyebrows. “No,” he said.

Kubira smiled. “I would be delighted to help,” she said.

  
  


_____

Kes hummed in deep satisfied delight as Shara shivered into another orgasm. It was easy to stay present, to not get lost in sensation and panic about interrogation droids, when she was so perfect, quivering so real and slick and tangy-sweet, her breath stuttering so sharply and her fingers so tight in his hair-- but he knew if he got cocky and stopped focusing he’d slide off again. Sex was a high-stakes sort of occupation now, and he was good at the game now.

Really, it was kind of insulting to Shara to think of how easily he’d been convinced that some vague, low-fi hallucinations of her had been real. He’d tried to explain this to her in a kind of laughing way, but she’d just gotten upset. He was starting to catch on, though, that she was better than he’d ever realized at hiding when she was upset. He hadn’t known; he’d thought of her as a fundamentally transparent person, honest and straightforward, but she was a lot deeper and more opaque than he’d realized, capable of a lot more calculation.

It was kind of insulting to Shara how well he’d thought he knew her, too; she was just so much _more_ , in real life, than in his understanding and memory. But he wasn’t going to try to explain that to her. Except maybe nonverbally, which was what he was trying to do just now.

As methods of communication went, cunnilingus wasn’t the most articulate, but it was pretty direct.

“Kes,” Shara gasped, panting, “Kes-- fuck! Oh-- fuck--”

“I got you, baby,” he said, easing up.

“Fuck me,” she said, “I want-- come on--”

Complete sentences were overrated. She composed herself enough to pause, putting a hand to his face to look him in the eyes. She did this a lot now, checked in with him, and he wanted to tell her she didn’t have to do that, but he’d discovered that he liked it, a lot. It wasn’t like they hadn’t communicated well during sex before, but having an extra level of knowing she was thinking about him specifically, making a point to find out what he was thinking, was kind of… weirdly reassuring, in a way he wasn’t sappy enough to pick apart. But it was another strike against his memory of her, that he’d never imagined her doing anything like that.

Their bodies fit together so perfectly. It was different, he couldn’t help but be more ginger with her, and she’d changed shape internally somewhat, not looser but more direct somehow, and it was humbling to consider and that made him feel strange too. But it was good, it was really good, and he didn’t have words for how profoundly it affected him to think about being inside her like that.

Being tortured and becoming a hardened murderer had made him sappy, really.

He held it together as long as he could, until her climax pulled him over too. She recovered before him, as she usually did, and kissed his head, murmuring sweet nothings, until he sighed and pulled himself together and rolled over onto his side to gaze sleepily at her.

She put out her hand and cupped the side of his face, rubbing her thumb along his cheekbone like she often did. Her mouth tugged sideways. “I don’t want you to go,” she admitted.

He gave her a rueful smile. “I don’t want to go,” he agreed. “But it’s--”

“I know,” she said. “It’s the right thing. I’m ready to go, for myself. I don’t know how I’m going to do it but I know I will.”

He nodded a little, and closed his eyes against the sting of thinking of parting from everyone. “We have to,” she said.

“I’ve never been apart from Poe,” she said. “Not even-- a few hours, maybe, a room away, that’s all. Not since-- he was conceived, you know? He was part of me, and now he’s-- I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

They were in orbit around Harasta already, and Shara was going down the next day for her intake evaluations. Kes had already checked in, and the Pathfinders with interrupted training were going to be parceled out to units, with no time to finish the training sessions formally; it would be up to their unit commanders to break them in. It was too dangerous now, to have organized camps, to do anything formally. It was a new world. It was war. Kes would have new orders within a couple of days, he’d been told.

“Hopefully you get a training rotation somewhere the others can come with you,” Kes said.

“I’m not likely to get a long-term billet anywhere it’d be safe for them to be,” Shara said. “Not if I get starfighters.”

Kes knew that was what she wanted. And if there was anyone with the reflexes for the really fast fighters, it was Shara. He didn’t want that, selfishly; of course he wanted her flying cargo craft, behind the scenes and out of the action. But it wasn’t likely, and it wasn’t what she wanted, so he kept his mouth shut. He’d gone Special Forces, it wasn’t like he had any leeway to lecture her on safety.

Her fingers traced the edge of his hairline. “You wish I’d pick something safer,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. He blinked, and refocused on her; he’d slid away a little. She looked wryly amused.

“I wish there wasn’t a war,” he said. “I wish there was still an Alderaan. I wish a lot of things, Shara.” He took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “But I think you’d better go through your intake processing and tell them your honest mind, and see where they put you, and do what you think is right. There’s no point wishing about any of that.”

She chewed on her lower lip for a moment, then leaned in and kissed his forehead. “I wish those things too,” she said fiercely.

“I wish we’d had time,” Kes said, and ran out of words, but from the way she looked at him, eyes suddenly glittering, he knew she understood. They’d had-- was it even a year together, now? They barely knew each other. And this-- depending on her intake processing, depending on his new assignment, this might be it. They might never see each other again.

She closed her eyes, a tear sliding out and across the bridge of her nose, and pressed her forehead against his. “I wish that too,” she whispered.

He thought about saying something optimistic, but his chest hurt and his throat was tight and he couldn’t make his tongue move. So he didn’t, and just lay there pressed together with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's more in this 'verse but I'm marking this story complete because this is a stopping point.   
> Thank you, everyone who's still reading. IDK what the ongoing update situation will look like, but if you stay subscribed to the series, it'll let you know when I continue this. :)

**Author's Note:**

> I am going to really try not to leave this on this cliff-hanger for too long. But, life.


End file.
